My husband poured boiling water over me whenever I got pregnant, screaming that he would keep doing it until I gave him a son.

That afternoon, Maya joined David and me on the porch. We sat watching the children of the women staying at Haven House playing soccer on the wide front lawn, their laughter echoing across the meadow.

Maya handed me an official legal letter postmarked from the state department of corrections.

"What's this?" I asked.

"Luke's final appeal was formally rejected by the State Supreme Court this morning," Maya said casually, sipping her iced tea. "His court-appointed lawyer resigned. He has exhausted every legal avenue. He will spend the rest of his natural life inside an eight-by-ten concrete box."

I looked down at the envelope. For years, receiving a letter or hearing Luke's name would have sent my heart into a paralyzing panic.

Now, I felt absolutely nothing. No anger. No hatred. Only the quiet, indifferent peace of a woman who had walked through the valley of the shadow of death and emerged on the other side holding the torch.

I didn't even open the envelope. I simply dropped it into the small metal fire pit on the porch table, struck a match, and watched the paper curl into black ash.

I reached up, unbuttoning the top two buttons of my cardigan.

The scars on my collarbone and neck were still there. They were pale silver now, smooth against my skin. David leaned over and gently kissed the line of scar tissue right above my heart.

"You are the strongest person I have ever known, Caroline," he murmured.

I looked out over Haven House, over the safe green fields, over the sister who had moved heaven and earth to save me, and down at the life growing safely inside my body.

The boiling water had been meant to burn my spirit to ash. Luke had tried to reduce me to a terrified, broken creature with nowhere to run and nobody to call.

He had failed.