And every time an outsider — a paramedic, a counselor, a mother — noticed that something was wrong, a cover story had been ready and waiting.

The judge did not need long.

She issued an immediate temporary order granting me sole physical and legal custody of Maya, and suspending all of Richard’s unsupervised visitation, pending a full psychological evaluation and the completion of the CPS investigation.

I did not feel a rush of triumph when she said it.

I want to be honest about that, because I had half-expected to.

What I felt instead was an enormous, weightless, almost dizzying wave of relief — the specific relief of a person who has been carrying something too heavy for too long and is finally, abruptly, allowed to set it down.