Madison also faced a perjury charge for the false testimony she’d given during our divorce.

Preston’s own attorney, it turned out, had advised him to surrender that morning — and instead he’d come to the hospital to celebrate the boy’s first birthday and humiliate me one last time.

He had mistaken cruelty for power. The soft click of the handcuffs proved otherwise; it was quieter than any insult he’d ever shouted at me, and somehow far louder.

As the officers led him away, he twisted around. “You planned this meeting!”

“No,” I said. “Running into you was chance. Being ready wasn’t.”

Madison sobbed as a social worker took the child.