It made me feel that the universe was not, after all, entirely indifferent, that patience and truth and a flawless paper trail assembled over twenty years could, in the end, catch what force and money had gotten away with.

My father had not sought revenge.

He had sought justice, which is a colder and cleaner thing, and he had built it so carefully that it asked nothing of me but to be alive to receive it.

The men who framed him would answer for it.

Not because I hated them.

Because it was true, and he had made the truth impossible to bury.

That, I have come to think, is the deepest difference between what those men did and what my father did.