Safety came first, and it came from a whole apparatus doing its unglamorous job: an emergency order keeping Dorsey away, a caseworker checking in, a counselor Birdie would start seeing twice a week, a mother who no longer had to choose between her child and her fear.

The healing would come after, slowly, on top of the safety, the way a garden comes back on top of ground you’ve finally stopped trampling.

But you have to have the ground first.

That day, for the first time, they had the ground.

Chapter 28 — Not Scared of Chairs

She pulled me to the kitchen table, where the drawings were spread out — birds on branches, birds in a great crowd of birds, not one of them in a cage.