“He doesn’t need anything from you or your family,” she said.

“Clara, he’s six years old.”

“He belongs with his father,” she said.

She pushed the door shut with her shoulder until the iron latch clicked hard into the strike plate, leaving me standing alone on the cold concrete step.

I stood on the step for a long minute listening to the quiet house, but no sound came through the door except the wind rattling the kitchen window screen.

By four o’clock in the afternoon I was back in the high-ceilinged hallway outside the court annex on the second floor of the courthouse, sitting on an oak bench across from the clerk’s door.