It is hers, and she built it with her own two hands out of the wreckage he left, and it is the most quietly triumphant thing I have ever watched a human being do.

Brock writes, sometimes.

After a while the letters changed — one arrived that made no excuses, that said plainly he had done unspeakable things with no justification, that he was not asking to be freed or forgiven, only writing the truth for once.

I asked Natasha if she wanted to read it.

She shook her head, and smiled, and said, “No.

I don’t need him to understand what he did in order for me to move forward.” And that sentence taught me more than all my sessions combined.