When I said the goal was never to destroy them but only to ensure they never held power over our lives again, I meant something precise by it, and I want to be understood: the two goals sound similar but they are opposites.

If your goal is to destroy the people who hurt you, then your peace depends on their ruin, and you remain chained to them, watching, waiting, never quite free, because a life organized around someone’s destruction is still a life organized around them.

But if your goal is only to remove their power over you, then you are free the moment you achieve it, regardless of what happens to them afterward — free whether they rise or fall, prosper or suffer, because their fate has simply stopped being relevant to yours.

We took the Millers’ power over Gaby.