My family, the real one — the quality of care, the refuge, the safety — had never existed in that house, had been counterfeited for two years by people who wanted the image without the substance.

What I did that night was not destruction.

It was construction.

I walked out of a cage that had been called a family, carrying the one real family member I had, and I went and built, from nothing, in a townhouse across the city, the actual thing — the refuge, the safety, the quality of care — that the cage had only ever pretended to be.

They accused me of destroying a family.