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.”

His office at home—once lined with books, student files, and research articles—became a war room. He spread calendars across the desk, highlighted dates of conferences, faculty retreats, weekend trainings, any period when he had been out of town or at work long enough for Marsha to take Owen to Sue’s unsupervised. He requested attendance records from the college. He pulled old text chains between himself and Marsha, searching for every instance where she had insisted, defended, minimized. He photographed Owen’s injuries as they faded. He wrote down every sentence the boy said in the middle of nightmares or while drawing with Isaac present over telehealth until in-person sessions resumed.

Wendell came by three days after Owen returned home. He sat at the dining room table with case files stacked beside his coffee and read through police reports while William organized binders. Owen was in the living room building a lopsided Lego tower in near silence.