I could describe how he waited for permission to have jam or how he cried when a plate slipped out of his hands.

The words felt far too small.

Nothing on the page captured what it felt like to watch your son flinch every time the front door shut.

Howard suggested I write about what I had seen with my own eyes instead of trying to guess what Dwight was feeling.

So that’s what I did.

I described the night I got home, the hospital visits, the speech therapy, the chair waiting outside Finn’s bedroom door.

I asked the court to recognize the harm without making my child’s healing depend on what happened to the man who caused it.