It was too large, and too sad, and too long in coming for triumph.

What I felt was something more like the quiet of a ledger, after thirty-two years, being balanced — an old, enormous debt at last coming due, in full, in public, to a man who had spent decades certain he would never have to pay it.

And I noticed, standing there, that the absence of triumph surprised me, because I had spent years, in my private imaginings, expecting this moment to feel like victory, like vindication, like the sweet rush of a scale finally tipping my way.

It did not feel like that at all.