I did not ask him to.

He drove us to his own house, in La Jolla, where I knew, with a bone-deep certainty I had not felt in a long time, that both of us would be safe.

And I noticed, buckling my daughter into my brother’s back seat, that I felt something I had not felt in the whole ordeal until that moment: I felt held.

Not rescued, exactly, because I was not the sort to want rescuing, and this was still my fight and my daughter and my life to rebuild.