But I let the ghost go in that courtroom, the imagined mother of unconditional love, because holding on to her was keeping me tethered to a hope that would only ever wound me.

I grieved her the way you grieve the dead, fully, and then I let her rest, and I turned to face the living woman at the defense table, who was not my mother in any sense that mattered, but only a stranger who shared my blood and had chosen, again and again, to spend it.

Chapter 18 — A Trail Too Wide to Hide

After that day, the legal dominoes fell quickly.