The legal process ended, as most of them do, not with a trial but with a resolution.

She accepted legal responsibility.

She agreed to court-mandated psychological evaluation and to strict, permanent restrictions on any contact with minors, and to a binding no-contact order covering the children.

Her respectability, which had shielded her for a lifetime, turned out to have a floor under it after all, and she had finally stood on it hard enough to fall through.

I felt no triumph when it was done.

I had expected to, in the early furious days, and I want to be honest that the feeling never came.