Her downtown condo lease, non-refundable as it was, was canceled by a court.

And the glittering high-society social circle she had prized above almost everything simply evaporated, overnight, the moment the indictment made the news, in the way that such circles always do the instant a person stops being useful to them.

I felt no triumph watching it.

I want to be clear about that, because I know the shape of the story seems to call for it.

What I felt was something quieter and much more complete — the satisfaction not of revenge but of restoration, of a wrong being set right, of stolen things going back to the people they were taken from.

My profession had taught me to find that particular satisfaction more durable than triumph, because triumph fades and restoration holds.