She Turned On the Lights

That was the deepest wound, deeper than the bruises.

And the antidote to it, it turns out, is not comfort or rescue.

The antidote is effective action — doing a thing, however small, and seeing that it works.

Every ledger Yvaine photographed and sent to me and saw routed to a federal investigator was a small proof, delivered to her own nervous system, that she was not helpless after all — that her actions had consequences, that she could reach out into the world and move something.

The evidence we were building against the Pembrooks was, of course, the point.

But it was doing a second job at the same time, quietly, inside Yvaine: it was disassembling the helplessness they had spent years installing in her, one successful action at a time.