I stood in my own bedroom with my infant son on my shoulder and my nine-year-old daughter beside me, and I read those two lines, and I understood, all at once, the true and complete shape of the day.

What had happened that afternoon had not been an errand that ran long.

It had not been a car that broke down, or a line at the store, or any of the small ordinary misfortunes that trap a parent away from home against their will. Leave the kids with Lily and come over now. Someone — this Julian Vance, whoever he was — had explicitly instructed my wife to abandon our nine-year-old daughter alone with our eight-month-old son, so that she could come to him.

And she had done it.