His cruelty rested entirely on my supposed helplessness.

And so there was a deep and specific and I think forgivable satisfaction in knowing that the entire time, in accounts under my maiden name, in a town he never visited, the helplessness he counted on had not existed for years.

He had built his entire treatment of me on a foundation I had quietly removed six years earlier.

Every contemptuous thing he did, he did while standing on ground that was no longer there.

He just didn’t fall until I decided it was time to stop holding him up.

That is not a noble feeling.