But I knew, standing in that rain, exactly whose tears had been fake seven years earlier.

And I knew I could not simply drive to her house and accuse her, because that, I was about to realize, was precisely what she would want me to do.

I stood a long time in that rain, after the specialists had finished, looking at the empty casket and the little blue bear, and I let myself feel, for the first time, the full and terrible shape of what had been done.

It was not only that a woman had stolen my child.