She looked up, and a huge unburdened smile lit her face — the wary shadows that always lived in her eyes at this house entirely gone.

“Ready to go home, kiddo?” She nodded hard.

“More than ready, Dad.”

I want to hold on that smile, because it was the whole reason for everything.

I had seen that face wear a hundred careful expressions at that house over the years — the polite mask, the braced calm, the small tight smile she put on to get through a visit without giving my mother the satisfaction of a reaction.

I had never, in eighteen years, seen it wear this one: open, light, unguarded, a kid in a car she’d been given by someone who loved her, on her way out of a place that had never once been kind to her, for the last time.