I told her that she could finally rest.

The days that followed were a hard blur of police statements and court filings and lawyers, and of truths that hurt more, somehow, now that the immediate danger had passed.

I learned that Richard had used my personal information to open fraudulent lines of credit in my name.

That he had tried to forge my signature on a deed to sell our home out from under me.

That he had taken out an enormous secret life insurance policy on my life, with a backup plan, if my mother ever managed to report him, to have her declared mentally incompetent so that no court would ever hear her.

And I learned one thing that broke me more than all the rest.