For Eight Months I Thought I’d Found Love After My Divorce — Then a Woman I’d Never Met Recognized His Photo and Said “When I Knew Him, He Went by a Different Name,” and I Understood Every Breakfast Had Been Reconnaissance

Which was, of course, exactly the thing Gregory had worked so hard to prevent.

He had not tried to keep Christopher away out of jealousy.

He had tried to keep him away because two parents who stand together are very hard to rob.

I have turned that phrase of Abigail’s over many times since — Abigail’s protection team — because in her innocent, literal way she had named the exact thing that saved her, the thing Gregory had spent eight months trying to prevent.

A child protected by two parents who are aligned is protected in a way that is more than doubled, because it is not just two adults but two adults who cannot be played against each other, who compare notes, who catch what the other misses, who present a united front that a manipulator cannot slip a wedge into.