“I wasn’t brave every day,” I answered.

“I found people who believed me, and I let them help while I found my own voice again.”

The woman thanked me.

I watched her cross the room toward a friend waiting by the door.

At home, Piper was asleep with Bunny beneath her arm.

On her bedside table stood a photograph from her latest birthday.

She was smiling between Lena and Gabriel, with a lopsided cake in front of them and balloons tangled in the ceiling fan.

I tucked her blanket around her shoulders.