She did not cry.

She rested against me with the total, trusting ease of a child who has decided, on no evidence at all, that she is safe, and I felt that trust settle onto me like a responsibility I had not agreed to and could not put down.

The room, the institutional hallway, the smell of floor cleaner, the woman waiting nearby, all of it seemed to recede, until the only real things in the world were the collar in Maya’s fist and the decision forming in my chest, a decision I had not driven to Colfax intending to make and that I already knew, with a certainty that frightened me, I was going to make anyway.

“May I see her file?” I asked.