Three months later, the spring sun came warm and full through the tall windows of our apartment in the city, a long way from Elm Street and the locked room at the top of its stairs.

The investigation had moved quickly once it had somewhere to go.

Victoria was charged, and held, and would not be walking back into anyone’s life; the law had finally done what a frightened boy never could, and it had done it without either of us having to become anything we’d have to carry afterward.

That mattered to me more than I expected.

We had not saved ourselves by matching her — we had saved ourselves by getting out and letting the truth, and the people whose job it is to hold the truth, do the rest.

I stood in our new kitchen that afternoon and poured two cups of coffee and watched my husband through the glass of the balcony door.