The letter arrived on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday, official and formal, informing Starr that Michael Adams's final appeal had been denied, that he would spend the remainder of his sentence exactly where the courts had originally decided he belonged. She read it twice, standing in her kitchen with Iris's crayon drawings taped haphazardly across the refrigerator behind her, and waited to feel something enormous, some final catharsis she'd expected to arrive with news like this.Instead, she felt only a quiet, settled kind of peace, the sense of a door closing gently rather than slamming shut, because the truth was, she realised, folding the letter carefully and setting it aside, he had stopped being the largest thing in her story a long time before this letter ever arrived. He was simply a chapter now, difficult and formative, but finished, folded neatly into the larger, far more interesting story her life had become around it."Everything alright?" Christopher asked, finding her ther
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