Not stolen.

Not seized.

Withdrawn — the way you withdraw your hand from beneath a weight you have finally decided to stop holding up.

I want to be precise about the moral shape of what I did that afternoon, because it matters, and because people who hear this story sometimes assume I did something vengeful or even underhanded, and I did neither.

I did not take one dollar that was not mine.

I did not seize Christopher’s money; he had no money to seize.