But now, listening to the ordinary sound of my sister’s footsteps beside mine in a safe and sunlit hall, the quiet did not announce anything at all.

There was no danger in it, and no warning, and nothing coming.

It was only quiet.

And for the first time in my life, I understood that silence could mean the opposite of what it had always meant.

It meant that we were safe.

It meant that it was over.

It meant, after seventeen years in which quiet had only ever been the sound of something terrible about to begin, that nothing terrible was coming, and that nothing ever would again.

It meant peace.