Three months on, it concluded at the county courthouse.

The heat had broken into a clear autumn morning.

My face had healed clean, no scars, and I walked in between my parents and Brendan in a white blazer feeling nothing they could touch.

At the defense table Craig looked hollowed out, thin and grey in a cheap suit; in the gallery Noreen sat shrunken, weeping into a tissue.

Facing the video, Craig pleaded guilty to felony aggravated assault rather than risk worse.

I looked at him across that courtroom and felt the strangeness of the reversal all the way through.