I felt only the quiet closing of a door on the most dangerous mistake I had ever made, and a bottomless gratitude that I had discovered it in time.

Six years, the judge gave her.

My daughters will be teenagers when she is released, and by then, I intend, they will be so surrounded by love and attention and the steady presence of a father who finally learned how to be one that the woman who once terrorized them will seem, I hope, like a bad dream from a house that no longer exists.

Chapter 20 — We Did Try to Tell You