No more cruelty dressed up as respect.

No more calling my own fear peace, or my own suppression loyalty, or the slow erasure of my voice the price of keeping a family that had never, when it counted, kept my daughter safe.

“Mommy, look!” Fiona called, running up the porch steps with a dandelion clutched in her small fist, her cheeks rosy and bright.

“A flower for you!” And I knelt down and swept my daughter’s small, warm, unafraid body into my arms and pressed a long kiss to her cheek — the cheek that had healed, completely, on the outside and, I was making certain, on the inside too.

“It’s beautiful, sweetie,” I whispered, and she wrapped her tiny arms around my neck and rested her head on my shoulder without a single trace of the fear she used to carry into every room.