Her small face broke into a brave, beautiful smile — and it was the bravery of it, more than anything, that finished breaking my heart, because a nine-year-old should not have to be brave like that, should not have that particular kind of courage in her, the courage of a child who has done a hard adult thing and is checking her mother’s face to see if she did right.

She walked toward me — past her father, past her weeping aunt, past her grandmother, her small shoes clicking softly against the floor, and nobody stopped her, and nobody said a word.

And when she reached me at the back doors, she slipped her small hand into mine.

“I’m ready to go home now, Mom,” she whispered.

And in that whisper I heard the whole of it — the exhaustion under the bravery, the child under the prosecutor, the little girl who had carried a mountain and could finally, now that her mother was here, set it down.

She was not triumphant.