She would grow up now as the daughter of an innocent woman who had been wronged and vindicated, and more than that, as the girl whose courage had done the vindicating.

The story the world would tell about her mother had been rewritten, and Chloe’s own place in it had been transformed from the pitiable child of a killer into something closer to a hero.

It would not give her back the years, any more than it would give them back to Elena.

But it changed the shape of everything that came after, and a childhood, unlike a lost adulthood, still has a great deal of time left in which a changed shape can matter.

Chapter 26 — Into the Light