Pratt and Attorney Cardenas I founded the Clear Record Foundation, to give legal help and real doctors and steady support to women whose powerful partners had tried to control them by controlling the story — the falsified files, the “she’s unstable” whisper campaigns, the money used as a leash.

Gabriel gave much of his savings to it and testified publicly about how the machine covered such things up.

“You still can’t buy my forgiveness,” I told him once.

“I’m not trying to,” he said.

“I’m trying to be useful to justice.” My parents came from Ohio and stayed through all of it; my father wept and asked me to forgive him for not seeing through Christian’s smile, and I told him no one could have.

Five years on, a letter came from the prison.