I had imagined this exact moment ten thousand times over ten years — Felicia exposed, the family forced to see, every harsh line I had rehearsed alone in the dark finally spoken aloud.

And standing there in it at last, with my children pressed close around me, I discovered that I did not want to say any of those lines.

They had curdled somewhere along the way into something I no longer needed.

The silence was doing the work.

The silence was enough.

I watched Felicia in that silence, and I will tell you what I saw, because it was not what I had spent a decade expecting to enjoy.

I had imagined her defiant to the end, or weeping, or spitting some final venom.