But the carrying was always meant to end at a courthouse door, in the hands of people whose job it was, and I let it end there gladly.

I want to say plainly that I felt no triumph watching it unfold on the news in the days that followed, no thrill of revenge.

What I felt was something quieter and deeper.

I felt that a debt ten years old was finally being paid, that a promise I had carried until it nearly broke me was finally being kept, and that a young man who had given everything to protect strangers was, at long last, going to be believed.

That was not triumph.