He had woken that morning, sixteen hours and an ocean ago, feeling like a man who held all the cards.

He had spent the flight, I imagine, rehearsing his custody story, savoring his cleverness, certain that his stranded, isolated, orphaned wife was still weeping on a beach with no way home.

And instead he was standing in handcuffs in an airport terminal, his daughter gently carried to safety by a caseworker, his mother screaming beside him in restraints of her own, and his wife, whom he had left with nothing, standing before him rested and free in a navy blazer, having answered his three-word note with the entire weight of the law.

Evelyn had asked who would come for me.