I let the veil stay where her mind had drawn it, and I spent my energy instead on the thing the therapist said mattered most: the slow, patient, daily rebuilding of safety, the repeated small proof, morning after morning, that she was home, that she was loved, that no one was coming to take her downstairs.

Some wounds you heal by facing them.

Others you heal simply by making the danger go away and then staying, faithfully, until the body believes the danger is truly gone.

My mother’s was the second kind.

And so I stayed.

I have become, in the months since, something I never expected to be: an advocate, in my quiet way, for the people who cannot document what is being done to them.

Because my mother was, in the end, one of the fortunate ones.