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.”

William had prepared for many questions but not that one, not in the doorway with dust motes floating through afternoon light and the air smelling faintly of lemon cleaner. He chose his words slowly. “Mommy isn’t allowed here right now.”

“Because she was bad?”

The simplicity of the question sliced through him. “Because she made choices that hurt you,” he said. “And my job is to keep you safe.”

Owen considered this, then nodded once, as though filing it in a place where new rules would have to compete with all the old ones.

The first week was a study in invisible wreckage. Owen followed William from room to room like a shadow and panicked if he lost sight of him for more than a minute. He refused closed doors. He would not go into the bathroom alone. He hid food in his pockets and under his pillow. If William raised his voice even slightly at the television or dropped a pan by accident, Owen flinched hard enough to make William physically ill. At night he woke screaming from dreams he could not describe except to say it was dark and she was coming.

William moved a mattress into Owen’s room and slept beside him.

During the day he began the work of building a case.