A frightened, cornered coward, who had only ever been brave against a woman who could not fight back.

His hand shook as he reached for the pen.

That, more than any signature, is the image I have kept: Arthur Vance’s manicured, powerful hand trembling as it signed away his kingdom, because for the first time in his life he had encountered a person he could not frighten.

Within ten minutes, every signature was executed.

Patricia was free.

And the man who had struck her for thirty-two years never, from that day, laid a hand on anyone again — because for the first time, someone had made the cost of it real.

I have thought a great deal about that phrase — made the cost real — because it is, I have come to believe, the entire mechanism by which abuse is finally stopped, and it is almost never what people imagine.