Halbrook,” Katarina said, sliding a thick folder across the table, “we are not here to negotiate your personal maturity.

We are here to finalize the annulment.”

The request for five private minutes was the most predictable thing he could have done, and I had known it was coming before he walked in.

It is always the move — the abuser’s instinct to get you alone, away from the lawyers and the witnesses and the people who love you, into a room where it is just his voice and your history and the two years of good memories he can deploy against you.

Alone, he could remind me of the trip to the coast, the way he’d held me at my grandmother’s funeral, all the evidence that the man in the kitchen wasn’t the real him.

Alone, without Katarina’s folder and my father’s presence, the story could become confusing again, could soften at the edges, could make me wonder if I was being too harsh.