What I felt was closer to the quiet of a house after a long storm has finally moved off to sea.

People expected me to be gleeful, in the months after, and I could see them being a little disappointed that I was not.

They wanted the satisfying story — the wronged wife who laughs last, who savors it, who frames the newspaper clipping.

And I understood the appetite for that story; I had felt it myself, in the early days, imagining the exact expression on his face.

But when it actually came, the satisfaction I had rehearsed never arrived, and something quieter and more durable came in its place.