Loving Your Child Is an Instinct; Shielding Him From the Consequences of What He Did to Another Human Being Is Something Else Entirely — I Learned the Difference at Sixty, at the Door of a Chicken Coop

And I did not yet know how much more there was to learn.

Chapter 5 — My True Son

That night I walked into the police station and filed a formal criminal complaint against my own child.

Mr.

Montgomery took me aside first and asked if I understood what I was doing — if I was truly prepared to move forward against my own son.

I reached into my purse and took out a photograph I had carried across an ocean and back: Brock at five years old, small and gap-toothed, with his arms around a stray puppy he’d begged to keep.

“That boy was my son,” I told him, and my eyes filled.