Within the hour his corporate attorneys were at the house, and they did two things that I did not have the knowledge or the money to do for myself: they insisted that every interaction be recorded, and they blocked the arrest, challenging the warrant on the spot, demanding to see the evidence behind claims that had been sworn out overnight by a woman with money and connections.

They held the line. But even they could not stop everything, and by that afternoon a family court judge had ordered an emergency custody evaluation — because the accusation, once made, had to be answered, and answering it meant strangers coming to decide whether my children were safe with me.

That was Agatha’s genius, I would come to understand. She didn’t need her lies to be true. She only needed them to be expensive and slow to disprove.

And the custody evaluation frightened me more than the theft charge ever could. Money I could lose and survive; I had already lost everything once.

But this was different. A stranger with a clipboard and the power of the state behind her was going to come and sit in my daughters’ rooms and decide whether they should stay with me — and Agatha had spent three days telling the whole world that I was unstable, unfit, a woman who used her own children as bait.

I lay awake that night doing the thing every mother in that position does: rehearsing.