And now the honest answer was nothing.

Genuinely nothing.

I did not want their apology, or their acceptance, or their respect, or their forgiveness, or anything else they had to give or withhold.

They had become, in a single night, people whose opinion of me could no longer touch me, and that, more than the estate or the company or the conviction, was the freedom I had actually won.

You are free of people the day you stop needing anything from them, including their good opinion.