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.”

There were other revelations, each one landing like a brick. Marsha had taken Owen to Sue’s more often than William knew by claiming errands, doctor visits, shopping trips. Sue sometimes came to their house when William taught evening sections. Once, during a conference in Boston, Owen had spent three full days with them and returned so subdued William thought he must be coming down with the flu. Another time, after Owen accidentally spilled milk at breakfast, Marsha had taken him to the guest bathroom and locked the door for what William now understood had been forty-five minutes. He remembered knocking. Remembered her emerging calm and saying, “He needed time.”

Needed time.

The phrase curdled in his mind.

He stopped going to campus except for essential lectures delivered remotely from his office or prerecorded with the dean’s approval. Colleagues sent sympathetic messages. Some sent casseroles. One older sociology professor, whose husband had worked in family court, texted a single sentence that William read three times: Abusers count on normal people being too decent to imagine them accurately.

The press broke the story before William had decided whether to speak publicly.