We moved through the glittering crowd without hurry, two more guests among five hundred, and no one gave us a second look, and I kept my eyes on the man on the terrace, the man from the billboards, the man from my daughter’s letter, the man who had sat behind a locked door and threatened a frightened girl and then gone home to his mansion and slept soundly for ten years.

My heart was pounding.

But my hands, I noticed, were perfectly steady.

I had waited ten years without even knowing I was waiting.

I could wait a few more minutes.

Standing in that glittering ballroom, watching him laugh and shine under the chandeliers, I felt something I had not expected to feel, which was a strange and total calm.

I had thought I would be shaking with rage, or sick with nerves, or overwhelmed by the sheer wealth and power arrayed in that room, five hundred important people who had all come to celebrate this man.

I was none of those things.