Three days before the park, she had written to a friend that she’d take Rhys for an afternoon and show me how a well-behaved child was supposed to act.

The friend had replied with something half-joking, the way people do.

And Sondra’s answer — I read it in the transcript and felt the floor tilt — was that she already knew what worked.

She already knew what worked. When Detective Sorenson finished reading it aloud, there was nothing left to argue.

This had not been a panic, or an accident, or a terrible one-time lapse.

She had planned to do to my son the thing she had been doing to her daughter for years.