The basement was locked. I had put a padlock on the door the week Gabriel left. Not because anyone was going down there. Because the lock was a promise. A physical, visible, click-shut promise that no person in my care would ever descend those stairs again.
The evening was warm. The porch light held. My mother was beside me.
She was seventy. She was tired. She was healing.
And she was not in the basement.
And that was more than enough.
