For several minutes I couldn’t speak.

Then I cried.

Not the neat tears of someone celebrating a victory, but the exhausted, gasping kind that had lived inside me for four years waiting for permission to come out.

Opal came outside, lowered herself into a chair beside me, and stayed until the shaking passed.

“Is it over?” she asked.

“The charges are dismissed.”

She touched my shoulder.

“Then we will mark today on the calendar.”