I had expected, walking into that building, to want to win — to want to see Richard humbled, to feel the hot satisfaction of being proven right after a year of being told I was the one overreacting.

And when the moment came, there was none of that in me, and I have never regretted its absence.

What I wanted, it turned out, had never been his defeat.

I had only ever wanted my daughter safe, and the instant the judge made her safe, everything else simply evaporated, revealed as a thing I had never actually needed.

There is a version of a mother who would have savored that courtroom.

I am glad, in the end, that I did not turn out to be her.