I did not need to.

The truth was on file.

It had witnesses that could not be intimidated and a memory that could not be rewritten.

For the first time in all those years, I was not outnumbered, because the facts had joined my side, and the facts, it turns out, are worth more than any chorus.

That was the freedom the documentation bought me, beyond the house and the custody: the freedom to stop defending myself, ever again, against people whose only weapon had always been that there were more of them than there were of me.

Chapter 19 — Every Single Day