“I don’t remember.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He smiled at her saucy reply. He expected nothing less from her. “It was about something that happened a long time ago, something I’d forgotten about.”

“With your dad?”

“Yeah.” Resigned now to having to tell her about it, he looked at the wall behind her so he wouldn’t have to see the sympathy on her face. “My friends and I broke a window playing basketball, and he flipped out about it when he got home. My mom and I got into it with him. It was ugly. I haven’t thought about it in years.”

“How old were you?”

“Ten or around there.”

“The trial has you thinking about stuff you’d sooner forget.”

He appreciated that she didn’t offer platitudes or sympathy he didn’t want. “I guess.”

“It’ll be over soon.”

“Will it? Will it ever really be over?”

“Yes, it will. It’s all resurfacing now because you know you have to see him in a couple of days and testify and hear your mother testify. Before all this, you’d managed to put a lot of distance between yourself and your past.”

“Not as much as I thought I had if I’m this easily undone by the thought of seeing him again.”

“Owen, he terrorized you for years. You’d have to be superhuman not to be undone by the thought of seeing him again. Please don’t put yourself through the added hell of wondering why you’re undone. Anyone would be.”

“I don’t want to be. I want to look right through him so he’ll know he doesn’t matter to me anymore.”

“He’ll know. When he sees us together and how happy we are, he’ll see that he didn’t win. That’s the second reason I want to be there. I want him to see that he didn’t win. You did. He’s going to jail, and you’re going back to your happy life full of love and joy and all the things he denied himself because he couldn’t control his rage.”

“What if he doesn’t go to jail? What if he gets off and never has to pay for what he did?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that possibility and worrying about what it’ll do to you and your mother if that happens.”

“And?”

“I’ve decided you’ll both be fine. He’s out of your lives. That’s the most important thing. And a tiger doesn’t change his stripes. He’ll find someone else to bully, and maybe the next time, the law will catch up to him.”

“I don’t want him to be able to do what he did to us to anyone else.”