My mother moved in with us for a year.
She said it was to help.
Really it was because none of us could stand to be apart for a while, and that’s alright.
Grief and terror leave a residue, and you scrub it out together or not at all.
And me?
I went back to work.
But not the work I did before.
During those nine days, I met detectives and social workers and one former state official named Ruth who changed my whole life, and I saw — from the inside — how a child can slip through a crack in the paperwork and nearly vanish.
So I trained.
I’m a court-appointed special advocate now.
A volunteer, and then, this year, a paid one.
I sit with children in the exact machinery that almost swallowed my daughter, and I make sure someone in the room is watching only out for them.
