But children are not weapons, and I had already watched a marriage turn a child into a courier of terrible truths, and I would not now turn him into an instrument of my own grievance.

But mostly it was because I had understood, somewhere in that long grinding six months, that my freedom did not actually depend on his punishment.

I had once believed the two were the same thing, that I could only be whole again if he were brought low.

It turned out not to be true.

His downfall and my recovery were separate events that happened to occur around the same time, and I could have built my new life just as fully if he had somehow escaped every consequence.

Wishing him ruin would only have kept a rope tied between us.