Not anger, not hatred, not even pity.

He simply held no power in our lives anymore, and a man who holds no power over you is not worth a single degree of your heat.

I did not expect to feel nothing on that porch.

I want to be honest about that.

In the darkest weeks, when I was gathering evidence and my daughter was flinching at every knock, I had imagined a hundred versions of a final confrontation with Derek, and in every one of them I felt something enormous — a towering rage, a cold satisfaction, a righteous fury finally released.

I had assumed, in short, that I would feel powerful in his defeat.