And now she was growing roses by the sea, in a place where no one could touch her, and inviting her former daughter-in-law to a dinner she herself had chosen to cook, at a time she herself had chosen to set, in a life that belonged, at last and entirely, to her.

The white roses bloomed today.

There is not a sentence in any legal document I have ever filed that has meant more to me than those five words, because they are the whole of what all of it was for.

Not the ruin of Arthur Vance.

Not the collapse of his empire.

Those were only the by-products.

This was the point: a free woman, in her own garden, watching something she planted come into bloom.

I typed back, On my way, and I meant it in every sense there is.