It meant she trusted me to carry it.

It meant that somewhere in those patient months, my too-good, too-responsible, too-grown-up little girl had finally, safely, relaxed back into being an ordinary, difficult, gloriously childish child.

I let her rage behind her door, and I did not scold her for it, and when she came out twenty minutes later, sheepish and over it, I hugged her, because she did not know that she had just shown me the surest proof of her recovery there is: a child healthy enough, and safe enough, to be a pain in the neck.

Chapter 20 — Finally Free