But his greatest error of all was believing that our story ended the day I put him on the ground.

It did not.

Gavin Prescott’s true defeat came months later, on an ordinary Tuesday, when I walked into my mother’s house and found her laughing so hard with three of her oldest friends around the kitchen table that she had to wipe tears from her eyes.

Nobody was talking about him.

Nobody was afraid.

Nobody was checking a face before she spoke.

Nobody in that kitchen so much as remembered his name.