We sit down, tears in all of our eyes, as we talk of the resolutions that have occurred. Alice has started school with other children and she is doing nicely. She is ahead in every level and that is something that those twisted people gave her.

Still, I wonder what remains.

“How have you been?” I ask.

Alice has Happy Face. “Great!” she says. “I love my new school and my new friends. And it turns out I don’t have any allergies, except to cats, but I can have dogs. And I can go outside anytime I want.”

I smile. “That’s wonderful news.”

We are all so happy for this little girl who is doing so well.

This little girl who made me drink milk but then set me free.

This little girl who watched her mother shoot the man who raised her, then felt her press that same gun into her head.

This little girl who has now lied for her.

That little girl.

We eat French fries and drink soda. The social worker leads us in a productive discussion about life and moving forward. She told me when I agreed to come that it was important for Alice to see that I was all right. That I was living a normal life now. That I needed to be a role model since we shared a similar experience in that house, even if I was only there for two weeks.

“I started working again,” I say. This is true. I have started tutoring students in science and I hope I can eventually go back to teaching.

“And my son is almost done with his junior year. I can’t believe how fast time flies!”

It has killed us to keep him at that school. It is that school that links us to this town. It was Evan’s choice to stay.

But when we go, we take the long way. And each time I see him, I remind him that nothing he could ever do would make me leave him. Not ever. Because he is enough. He is more than enough. He is everything. He and Nicole.

I will never speak of that moment in the storm, when my legs carried me away from them. When I walked away.

I am here now. We are here now.

We. That is a word I have been using more lately. John and I drive together when we take Evan to school. He’s been taking days off from work to come with me. He doesn’t want to lose me again. How strange that it took this horrific experience for him to know this, and for me to believe it.

I feel it more every day since I was saved—my love for John tiptoeing across that invisible line. It has not been a watershed. But it is no longer impossible. I feel it. He feels it.