None. Not the judgment I am ashamed to say I had felt in my own heart at the sight of her.

He looked at this ruined, terrified, failing young woman with something that stopped my breath: a plain, devastating, bottomless understanding.

“Nobody is taking your daughter, Tessa.” He said it quietly, holding her wild eyes with his steady ones.

“Nobody. She’s been fighting a war all night long — a war she didn’t start, one she inherited from before she ever drew a breath. That’s all. And I just sat down in the trenches with her so she wouldn’t have to fight it by herself. That’s the only thing that’s happened here.”

The manic energy drained out of her face, slowly, and something crushing came up underneath it.

“She was crying,” Sarge went on, and his voice gentled, the gravel smoothing out of it.