The other is only the terrible, ordinary vulnerability of loving someone and choosing to believe them.

If I had let my grief blur those two things together — if I had punished my trusting daughter as though she’d been my calculating son-in-law — then Shawn would have taken from me the one thing the courts gave back: my family.

I decided he would not have it.

It took counseling and time and more forgiveness than came naturally to me, but I decided, and I held to it, and it is the decision I am proudest of in the whole affair.

We went to counseling together, the two of us, week after week.