And so the hope that came back into her voice in that visitation room was not the soft, naive hope of her early imprisonment.

It was something harder, a hope with evidence behind it, a hope she was choosing to pick back up knowing exactly how much it could hurt her if it failed.

That is the bravest kind of hope there is: not the hope of someone who has never been disappointed, but the hope of someone who has been disappointed to the very bottom and is willing, one more time, to reach for the light anyway.

“You need to call my attorney.