The Day I Dropped My Husband at the Airport, My Eight-Year-Old Daughter Warned Me Not to Go Home. Minutes Later, I Saw Why.

Alvarez sat near me.

We didn’t even talk about being scared.

We just looked up.”

Later that night, as I hung her jacket by the door, I found a drawing in the pocket: a dark dome full of stars, two small people sitting beneath them, and a caption written in careful block letters.

IT IS OKAY TO GO SOMEWHERE NEW.

I put the drawing in our family folder, not beside the court records but beside the pictures of birds and the redbud tree.

It belonged to the life Lily was living, not the danger she had survived.