My son left his eight-year-old adopted daughter burning with a 104-degree fever so he could take his biological son on a luxury cruise. They thought no one would know. Until my phone rang at 2:00 a.m.

Maya’s physical recovery took two weeks, but the psychological rot they had planted in her mind ran terrifyingly deep. She monitored my moods constantly. She asked permission to eat, to use the bathroom, to leave a book on the coffee table. If she coughed, she would immediately clap a hand over her mouth and apologize profusely, her eyes wide with the primal terror of being abandoned.

“I’m sorry, Grandpa,” she would whisper, backing into a corner. “I’m not being dramatic. I’ll be quiet. Don’t send me away.”

It broke my heart anew every single day. I had spent my career dealing in facts and evidence, but a child’s trauma requires a different kind of jurisprudence. It requires infinite patience.

I established routines. We ate pancakes every Saturday morning. We walked Cooper the dog at exactly 4:00 PM. I stopped wearing suits and started wearing soft flannel shirts, trying to project safety rather than authority. Slowly, the terrified ghost of the girl I had carried out of that sweltering house began to fade, replaced by a cautious, brilliant child who loved astronomy and possessed a wicked, dry sense of humor.

Months later, winter settled over Alabama.