“But you’re here now.” And he was.

Three years on, I sat on a wooden bench at a playground in Savannah and watched my daughter run — full-tilt, fearless, golden curls flying — up the ladder of a bright plastic slide.

“Mommy, look at me!” she shouted.

“I’m watching, sweetheart!” I called back.

She flew down the slide and hit the bottom and let out a shriek of pure delight, loud enough that a few parents nearby turned their heads.

And I thought about a hallway at midnight, and a woman who had told me to make my daughter be quiet or get out, and I leaned back into the sun and I smiled, because that woman was gone from our lives for good, and my daughter was loud, and alive, and free, and afraid of no one.