I watched them turn on each other, Roman and Larissa, in the space of about four seconds — watched the tender grieving lovers of the courtroom become two cornered animals each trying to shove the other in front of the closing door — and I felt, standing there, none of the triumph I had expected.

I had imagined this moment for two years, had pictured their faces when it all came down, and I had assumed the picture would be sweet.

It was not sweet.

It was only sad, and a little sordid, and mostly it made me tired.

Because there is nothing to savor in watching two people who never really loved anyone discover that they don’t even love each other; it is not a fall from a great height, it is just the ground giving way beneath people who were always standing on nothing.

Larissa screaming that Roman made her do it, Roman spitting that she’d begged for the money — I looked at them and understood that this was simply what they had always been, underneath the pearls and the cedar and the beautiful performed grief, and that the only thing my whole campaign had really accomplished was to strip the performance away and let the room see the small grasping thing that had been there all along.