I did not press charges. I made one condition instead, in writing, and it was not about money. Neither of them sees my children without me present. Roberta signed it in January in a lawyer’s office with her hands shaking, and I felt nothing I recognized as satisfaction.

Wesley and I went to counseling for eight months. He is still in it alone. He has stopped translating his family for me, which is the single hardest thing he has ever done, and he did it without being asked twice.

Mabel is eleven now. In March she told me she does not want to go to the birthday parties anymore, and I told her she never has to, and she looked at me like I had handed her something she had been quietly saving up to buy.

We bought a bigger kitchen table in the spring. Six chairs. It was more table than we needed, and Theo asked why, and I said because this house is never going to run out.

Fourteen years I mistook being needed for being wanted. The bill arrived on a Saturday, served to my children on paper plates. What I understood at that curb, with the engine running, is that nobody ever has to earn a seat at their own life. You only have to stop asking permission to sit down.