“Your father loves you both very much,” I said, “even though the grown-ups are making choices right now that are hard, and that hurt.

That part is true no matter what else happens.”

Amelia held up her rabbit.

“Can Bunny come too?”

“Bunny absolutely comes with us,” I said, and I managed to smile at her, and it was almost real.

Those few minutes in that bedroom were, in their own quiet way, the hardest of the entire night — harder than facing Brandon and Cynthia downstairs, harder than the courtroom that came later.