In his mind — and this is the part that reveals the whole diseased logic of the man — the burns were not something he had done to me.

They were simply a condition I now had, a defect that made me less fit to own property, the way a cracked foundation makes a house worth less.

He had so completely erased his own agency in the matter that he could attach pictures of his crime to a legal filing and see only proof of my diminishment.

It was, in its way, the same logic as his mother’s remark over the kitchen floor: I was the problem, my body was the problem, and my problems were fair grounds for taking what I had.

But the law does not read a filing the way a narcissist writes it.

Where Lars saw proof of my weakness, Rhoswen saw a signed, sworn document in which the defendant in a criminal assault case placed himself at the scene, referenced the injuries, and — crucially — admitted knowing about the camera system he would later be shown destroying.