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 flinched at the word. Not visibly, he hoped, but somewhere inside him something recoiled. He had spent years studying the language adults used with children, the shape of authority, the thin line between structure and domination. He taught introductory psychology at the community college in Hartford and specialized, when his schedule allowed, in trauma research—particularly trauma in children. He could lecture for an hour on the developmental impact of chronic fear, the neurological distortions caused by unstable caregiving, the way shame could alter a child’s understanding of self before they even had language for their own pain. He knew, professionally and intellectually, what cruelty did to small people.

Yet here he was, driving his son to a place the boy was begging not to go.

His stomach twisted so hard it hurt.