Time is the one thing no court can restore, and a wrongful sentence steals it in a form that no restitution can ever repay, because the currency it takes is not money but life itself, spent, gone, unrecoverable.

So I hold the two truths together, the way I have learned to hold most true things.

The pardon was a victory, real and hard-won and worth every hour we spent building the case for it.

And the pardon was not enough, because nothing could be, because the debt Fiona owed me was denominated in a currency that cannot be paid back.

I do not spend my days grieving the lost years; that would be to let her take even more of them.

But I do not pretend they were returned to me, either.