My father, in one sentence, had handed me back the thing the last five years had slowly taken: the understanding that I was not a surface for other people’s cruelty to land on but a person with agency, with options, with a switch in my hand that I and only I could decide whether to throw.

They had spent years teaching me I was powerless.

He undid it in eight words, and I felt the lesson settle into my spine and stay there, and I have never once, in all the time since, let anyone teach me the other thing again.

Chapter 7 — Building the Case

At two o’clock we pulled up to the trauma center, and Brendan was already waiting in a charcoal suit, his jaw tightening when he saw my face.

“I told your father years ago,” he said quietly.