The trial concluded on a wet Thursday in November. Guilty on eleven counts. I sat in the back of the courtroom and listened to the verdict and waited for something dramatic to move through me—relief, triumph, grief, anything cinematic. What came instead was quieter. Just the simple, solid feeling of a ledger that had finally, completely, balanced.
I knew my husband was cheating on me, and I met his mistress in a hotel lobby on a grey Tuesday afternoon, and I did not cry or rage or fall apart. I did what I had always done. I followed the evidence to its source. The difference was that this time, at the end of the trail, I found myself. Waiting. Ready. Undefeated.