We sat. Molly, who trusts her instincts about people more than I trust anyone’s Yelp review, went directly to Savannah and leaned against her leg like a prayer answered. Ethan waved a wooden toy and pronounced “Gaaaaa” like he was announcing a newly discovered planet.

“I need to tell you something,” she said. She told it in a voice that didn’t tremble until she mentioned the courthouse. That’s when the tremor arrived, small but seismic. Her husband, whose money was a cage and a cushion. The clothes he made her wear when she left the house, the ways he insisted she be small and unremarkable so no one would notice the bruises—“on my bank account and my body,” she said, wincing at her own attempt at levity. The day at the thrift store was the day she had filed a police report and a restraining order. The sneakers had been a decision about dignity she couldn’t afford and then, because of me, a decision she was allowed to make.

“I went home and looked at those shoes for an hour before I put them on,” she said. “They felt… like standing up taller. That probably sounds ridiculous.”