Justice is not the same thing as healing.

But justice is the floor that healing needs, because you cannot begin to rebuild while the person who tried to destroy you is still walking free and still holding the story.

Getting the truth on the record, getting Brandon behind bars, getting Liam’s future secured — none of that erased what happened.

It simply cleared the wreckage, so that I could finally begin the real and unglamorous work of building a life on top of the place where the old one had fallen.

Chapter 18 — The Truth Never Stays Buried

There is one thing about the whole affair that I have turned over more than any other, and it is the assumption at the very center of Brandon’s plan, the single belief on which everything he did was built.