hand.
“Your father wanted you safe,” I said. “More than anything.”
She closed her fingers around the watch.
For a second, I saw grief pass through her face, but it did not swallow her. It moved through and left something strong behind.
Theo reached for the watch, fascinated by the shine.
Naomi laughed and lifted it away from his sticky fingers.
“Not yet, little man.”
We stood there together as evening settled over the station.
No one looking at us would have known what had happened on that same stretch of pavement months before. They would not have known about the coins in Naomi’s shaking hand, the hidden formula, the recordings, the forged paper, the blue blanket dropped in the hallway.
But we knew.
And more importantly, Naomi knew something else now.
Shame belonged to the people who had sent her there.
Survival belonged to her.
When we walked back to the car, she did not lower her head. She carried Theo with one arm, my husband’s watch in her other hand, and the first clear breath of her new life in her chest.
