“I know I don’t have to.” She put her chin on her knees. “That’s the second time in a year somebody’s told me I don’t have to do something and I’ve hated it.

I’m so tired of being the person nobody can ask anything of.”

Derek was convicted on the sixth day and sentenced in August. Fourteen years, with the possibility of parole considerably before that, which the victim advocate explained to Sabrina twice and which she took better than I did.

The victim advocate also explained — patiently, on a bench outside courtroom four — that a conviction is not the end of anything. That there would be an appeal, probably.

That Sabrina would want a custody order in place regardless of the sentence, because the sentence does not sever parental rights, and that this was a separate matter in a separate court and would take a further eighteen months.

She said it gently. Sabrina said, “So it’s not over.”