I felt nothing.

Because revenge, I had learned, is an exhausting and hollow thing, one that keeps you tethered forever to the very person who hurt you, forced to keep them alive in your mind so you can go on hating them.

What I felt, looking out over the harbor, was not victory.

It was closure, which is a far quieter and far better thing, and which asks nothing of you except that you finally put the file down.

People find that answer unsatisfying, when I give it, because they want the story to end in triumph, in the vindicated woman savoring her enemy’s ruin, and I understand the appeal, but it would be a lie, and it would also, I think, be a smaller ending than the true one.