I adjusted her against my chest, and she gripped my collar again, the same gesture from the same small hand that had, a few hours earlier, reached up and claimed me before I even knew who she was.

We drove out of Colfax that afternoon in a small caravan, my car and Arthur’s SUV, carrying between us a child, a briefcase full of documents, and the beginning of a family remade.

I kept glancing at her in the mirror the whole way, half expecting to discover I had dreamed her.

She slept, mostly, one sock still missing, entirely unbothered, having decided that the world was a safe place to sleep in now, because she was, at last, with people who were not going to hand her back.

I have thought many times since about how much trust that took, and how little the world had done to earn it from her, and how she gave it anyway.