When she stepped into my living room that night, she stopped in the middle of the room, and for a full minute she did not move at all, as though she did not quite trust that she was actually standing somewhere safe.

And then she sank down onto my sofa and began to cry, not the frightened weeping I had seen at my kitchen table, but something deeper and more exhausted, the crying of a person who has been holding her breath for a very long time and has finally, finally been told she can let it out.

“I honestly thought,” she said, when she could speak, “that I was going to die in that house.” I sat down beside her and put my arm around her shoulders.

“You are out now, Mom,” I told her, holding her steady.