I have been asked, since, whether I felt triumphant walking out of that apartment, whether there was satisfaction in it, and the honest answer is no, or not the kind people imagine.

There was no glee in me, no sense of victory.

What I felt was closer to the quiet you feel after a long illness finally breaks, a tiredness and a clarity and a faint disbelief that the thing is actually over.

Liam was, whatever else, the man I had once loved and married and planned a life with, and there is no triumph in watching that end, even when the ending is entirely his doing and entirely necessary.

I did not walk out of that apartment to win.