The two ledgers — the legal one and the personal one, the case and the healing — do not close on the same schedule, and it is important not to mistake one for the other.

My legal case moved fast; within months, the warrants were served and the pleas were entered and the accounts were frozen, and to an outside observer it might have looked as though I had put the whole thing behind me with brisk professional efficiency.

But the inside did not match the outside.

While my case was racing toward its clean conclusion, my body and my mind were only beginning a much slower work, one that could not be rushed or filed or motioned to a close.

And for a while that mismatch confused me and even shamed me: how could I still be flinching at a knock on the door, months after I had won so completely?