I had imagined that moment through the whole long night, and I had expected to feel something enormous when it came — a flood of vindication, or fury, or at least relief.

What I actually felt, watching the metal close over the hands that had brought me funeral flowers eight hours before, was a strange, spreading quiet.

It was over.

That was the whole of the feeling: it was simply over.

The thing that had been coming for me and my child had been stopped in this room, in front of witnesses, with his own voice already three places safe, and there was nothing left for me to do but hold my daughter and let the machine I had built finish its work.

I did not gloat.