And my wife understood, with a clarity that humbles me still, that to accept the money would be to accept that relabeling, to agree that what was done to her was the kind of thing that could be settled rather than punished, to let them buy their way out of being criminals by making her, retroactively, merely an aggrieved party who had been compensated.

She would not do it.

Not because she did not want the money, but because she refused to let them purchase a lie about the nature of what they had done.

Some harms are wrongs, not disputes, and to accept payment for them is to agree that they were only ever disputes — and my wife had decided, in that bed, that what the Prescotts did to her was a crime, and that crimes are answered with justice, not settled with checks.

She tore the paper in half.