Not out of spite, which would have been a kind of caring, but out of a genuine, weightless indifference.

Roman had finally become, to me, what he had always most feared being: unimportant.

And that, not the sixty percent, not the courtroom, was the moment I was, at last, completely free.

I know how strange it must sound, to locate the moment of my liberation not in the dramatic victory of the hearing but in a small, quiet morning six months later, shredding an unopened envelope without any feeling at all.

But that is exactly where it was, and understanding why has changed how I think about healing from anything.