They had told me it did not work like this.

They were about to find out exactly how it worked.

And there was, I will admit, one more feeling underneath my calm as I stood there watching the law arrive, and it was for my mother, who was five miles away in a hotel bed and could not see this.

I wished, in a way, that she could.

Not for the spectacle of it, not for revenge, but because she had spent two years being made to feel powerless, being taught that these people held all the cards and she held none, that the situation was permanent and she was helpless inside it.

And here was the proof, pulling up to the curb in three vehicles, that none of it had ever been true.