A court-approved digital forensic analyst was given the images Selina had submitted as evidence of David’s threatening messages — the pages of unhinged, violent texts that had cost my son his children.

And the analyst compared them, as analysts do, against the hard, boring, incorruptible record that exists beneath all our communications: the carrier logs.

They did not match.

Several of the messages that Selina had presented as threats sent by David had no corresponding record of ever having been sent — not from his device, not from his phone number, not through any carrier, at any time.

They existed only as images.

And when the analyst examined the images themselves, down at the level of their metadata, the level most people do not know exists and cannot fake, he found clear and unambiguous signs of manipulation.