He wanted us to be nothing, quietly, in the dark, where no one would ever know.

Instead he is the one who is nothing to us now — a closed door, a settled case, a name we rarely say — while we go on, in the light, together.

He lost more than the case.

He lost the only thing he had ever really been trying to take, which was us, and he will never have us again, and the not-having is a sentence longer than any a court could hand down.\n\nSix months later, I walked back into that kitchen for the first time, to pack up our things.

The afternoon sun came through the window and lay across the floor and made the whole room look ordinary and peaceful, the way it had looked on the night it nearly became the last room we were ever in.