“It cost us pieces of ourselves.

But our boy is safe, and he is free.” We walked back to the car hand in hand, and there were no thunderclaps and no swelling music, only a lightness in my chest I hadn’t felt since the night he died — and the knowledge that the most dangerous predators rarely come at you in a dark alley.

Sometimes they sit at the head of a long table, call you family, pour you a cup of tea, and slide a gold pen across the wood with a reassuring smile.

I think about the stranger on the bus more than he could ever know.