She used it.

She founded a charitable foundation for survivors of domestic violence, and she runs it herself, with a keen intelligence no one in that family had let her show, and she has helped a great many other frightened women find the exit she took thirty-two years too late.

And she bought a house on the ocean in Santa Barbara, with a garden, in a place where no man will ever again raise a hand to her — a sanctuary she earned, and owns outright, and shares only with the people she chooses.

She got her whole life back.