That is the thing that changed in me, the thing I did not expect, the quiet reordering of a life.

For nine years I had told myself that the work was the point — that catching the people who prey on the vulnerable was the highest use of my hours, and I still believe that, I have not stopped believing it.

But I had let the work become a reason to be absent from the very people the work is supposed to be for, and there is a hollowness in that I can no longer ignore.

I nearly lost my father to the exact crime I spend my life prosecuting, and I nearly lost him partly because I was too busy prosecuting it for other families to notice it happening in my own.