But it was secondary.

It was downstream.

It could wait the thirty seconds it took to watch my daughter carried to safety, and it did wait, because a mother’s priorities, when they are clear, arrange themselves without effort into the right order.

Julian had taken my child to use as leverage, as a bargaining chip, as a means to an end.

I would not, even in the moment of my victory over him, treat her as anything of the kind.

She was not a piece of my confrontation with her father.