The courtroom was the victory.

The victory was necessary, and I do not diminish it.

But victory and freedom arrived on different days, and the gap between them was those six months, and what happened in that gap was not more winning.

It was the slow, quiet fading of my need to have won.

In the first weeks after the hearing, I still felt the triumph, still turned the memory of Roman’s collapsing face over in my mind with a satisfaction I am not proud of but will not pretend I did not feel.

And if I am honest, in those weeks I was still not free, because I was still thinking about him, still deriving something from his downfall, still, in that way, tethered.