This one was exhausted and hollow-eyed and entirely, finally, resolved.

I flagged a taxi on a bright avenue and rode out toward the dark edge of the city in silence, watching the lights go by, and holding, the whole way, the memory of my son’s arms around my waist at the airport.

I thought, in that taxi, about all the versions of myself that had led to the one riding out to that warehouse.

The young woman with a career and a future, before Lachlan.

The wife who had slowly let herself be talked into smallness, one reasonable concession at a time.

The mother in the courtroom, gutted.