I looked at my mother during that testimony.

She sat perfectly composed, the rigid spine of a pageant queen, her eyes shining wet but unfallen.

And I watched her, in the middle of her own public autopsy, tilt her head one degree and check her reflection in the glass tabletop.

Both things were true at once, forever.

The starving fifteen-year-old victim, and the monster who became the scale.

My chest ached, but my resolve didn’t move an inch.