I bought stability for my daughters — a safe home, a cushion, a future that did not depend on anyone’s whim.

And then I took the rest, and I did the only thing with it that felt true: I established a patient-advocacy foundation, and I funded legal reviews for women who suspected that their own medical records had been manipulated by a controlling partner.

Because I had learned, in the worst possible way, that it could be done — that a man could forge a woman’s own body and use it against her — and I could not stand the thought of how many women were being told they were broken by records that had been quietly rewritten.

I did not celebrate Julian’s downfall, or Evelyn’s.

I had no appetite for it, and I have noticed that people who have been through something rarely do.

What I celebrated was quieter and much larger.