What came instead was quieter and more durable: the knowledge that the man who had twice tried to take everything from her would never again be in a position to take anything from anyone, and that it had been done the right way, in the open, by people whose job it was, with evidence that would hold.

She thought a great deal, in those weeks, about the difference between justice and vengeance, because she had wanted the second one so badly for so long and had been handed the first one instead.

Vengeance would have been hers to keep, private and hot and corrosive, and it would have asked her to become, in some small way, a person who took matters into her own hands.

Justice belonged to everyone, and it had cost her nothing of herself, and it left her free.