My son sobbed the entire drive to his grandmother’s house. “Daddy, please don’t leave me here.” My wife snapped, “You’re babying him.” I left him anyway. Three hours later, a neighbor called. “Your little boy ran to my house shaking. He’s hiding under my bed and won’t stop crying.”

“Eight months on this calendar. We may find more records.”

Eight months.

His knees hit the hallway bench harder than he expected. He sat because the alternative was collapsing. The arithmetic of his failure began immediately and would not stop. Eight months meant winter. It meant spring. It meant birthdays and Easter baskets and parent-teacher conferences and normal breakfasts and bedtime stories all coexisting alongside a system of torture his son endured while William lectured college freshmen about healthy attachment and wrote papers on trauma detection.

“How is your wife explaining it?” he asked.

Stark’s mouth hardened. “She isn’t. She invoked counsel. But she did make one statement before that. She called the shed a disciplinary environment.”

William let out a sound of disgust that bordered on a sob.

“There’s more,” Stark said. “Your son may face media attention because of his grandmother’s injuries. We’re doing what we can to keep his name protected. The district attorney’s office is aware of the footage, and based on current evidence they are treating this as self-defense. But if Sue dies—”