I need you to be brave just a little bit longer — can you do that?”

Junia looked past him, out through the glass, to where her father was being settled into the back of a patrol car.

She didn’t cry.

She didn’t shout.

She had the terrible composure of a child who used up her fear a long time ago and had been running on something else ever since.

Cordell had wondered, at the counter, why it was Junia who did all the talking, all the planning, all the carrying — why the burden of the whole escape had fallen on one twin and not been shared between two children the same age.