The answer to having trusted the wrong person is not to stop trusting.

It is to get better at looking, to keep your eyes open even inside your affections, and to be ready, when the truth arrives, to act on it without flinching.

That much I can do.

The rest I have chosen to let go.

Chapter 25 — What the Law Did

I will not draw out the legal aftermath, because it unfolded the way these things are supposed to unfold when the evidence is clean and the people handling it are competent: steadily, lawfully, without spectacle.

That evening at the hospital, once she was treated and steadier, Teresa gave a full sworn statement, detailing the weeks of harassment that had led to that day and the staging of the theft that set it off.