Per your standing directive, I confirmed that the permanent restraining order remains in effect, and that no communication will be accepted.

I read it, and I waited to feel something — a flare of the old anger, a bitter flicker of triumph, something.

Nothing came.

What I felt instead was an absolute, unshakeable calm, the calm of a man for whom a chapter is genuinely, permanently closed.

“Is everything okay?” Wendy asked, watching my face.

“Everything’s perfect,” I said, and I closed the document, and I turned the phone face down on the table, dismissing the past the way you set down something you no longer need to hold.