That’s all.

I promise you.”

She looked at me for a long moment, and I watched her remember, fully, who her daughter actually was, the thing Gavin did not know and could not have imagined.

Some of the terror went out of her face, replaced by something else, a fragile, painful trust.

She let go of my arm.

She nodded.

She closed the door.

And I have thought since that this small moment, my mother choosing to trust me and shut that door, was itself a kind of turning point for her, though neither of us could have named it then.