I have tried, since, to be honest with myself about what I felt watching the Draycotts fall, because I think the honest version matters more than the satisfying one.

I did not feel triumphant.

I want to say that plainly, because the story invites triumph and triumph is not what was there.

What I felt, mostly, was tired, and clear, and increasingly, as the months passed, free.

The thing my uncle Rutger had given me was not really the money, though the money mattered — it would be the difference between raising Isla anxiously and raising her with room to breathe, and I will not pretend that difference is small.

What he had really given me was standing.