“You are out, and you are safe here, and he is never going to hurt you again.” I meant it as a promise.

I also knew it was not yet a fact.

There is a dangerous stretch of time, in getting someone away from a person like Gavin, between the leaving and the safety, and everyone who does this work knows to fear it.

Leaving is not the end of the danger; in many ways it is the sharpest point of it, because it is the moment the controlling person realizes their control is gone, and that realization can make them reckless in ways they were careful never to be while things were going their way.

I knew, sitting on that sofa with my arm around my crying mother, that we had not reached safety yet.