Every day, through the final months of the marriage and the whole grinding process of the divorce, I sat across from people I now knew were preparing to send me to prison, and I said nothing, and I kept my face the same still, patient, defeated face they had always mistaken for weakness, and I let them believe they had won.

It was the most difficult performance of my life, to be robbed and framed and to smile and keep quiet, and I could only endure it by holding onto a single fact: that the quiet was not weakness this time either.

It was the discipline of a professional who understands that evidence deployed at the right moment is worth infinitely more than emotion vented at the wrong one.

A case is a weapon, and a weapon fired too early is worse than no weapon at all.