“No, Samantha,” I said. “I’m keeping my daughter safe from you.”

The legal outcome was absolute. What happened outside the courtroom, I had nothing to do with.

The clip of Samantha smiling while her daughter was tormented went across the internet inside forty-eight hours.

I hadn’t released it. Mrs. McDaniel hadn’t sent it anywhere. The police had it locked in evidence.

Samantha and her sisters had shared it with their own circles before the arrests, assuming their friends would find it funny.

Their friends did not.