A verdict does not erase the panic of hearing footsteps in a dark hall, or the reflex to cover your arms, or the habit of asking permission before taking food from a refrigerator.

For months, even in a secured building, I wedged a wooden chair under my bedroom doorknob and checked the window locks several times before I could sleep.

I started weekly therapy with a specialist in trauma and abuse recovery. Step by step, I took back the small things — choosing my own clothes, buying whatever groceries I wanted, walking without watching a map, sleeping through the night without dreading a text alert.

Working with Samuel and federal consumer-protection agencies, I rebuilt my credit, submitting court rulings and fraud claims to every bureau until every dollar of Logan’s fraudulent debt was wiped away.

I recovered the trust money and cleared the illegal liens from my mother’s oceanfront property — and then I sold it. I had no wish to live inside walls that smelled of confinement.

The restitution was a different matter. Samuel explained that an order is not a payment, that collection against an incarcerated defendant with no assets is measured in decades, and that I should not build any part of my future on it.