I was not crying over Brandon.

I had, I realized, stopped grieving Brandon somewhere around the second column of the blue folder.

I was crying out of sheer, overwhelming relief.

Relief that after eight years, at last, I held the key to my own front door, and no one could change the code on me ever again.

I have thought a great deal, since, about why that particular image — the key, the door, the code — carried so much more weight than the divorce papers or the receipts or even the affair.

I think it is because a locked door is the most literal possible sentence a person can speak.