A car breaks down; a person gets stuck in traffic; emergencies happen, and a parent trapped away from their children by genuine misfortune is a thing to be pitied, not condemned.

But before lunch. Seventeen minutes that had become most of a day.

A nine-year-old, alone, with an infant, for hours.

That was not an accident.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, even as I drove, I already understood that.

I just did not yet know how completely.

I want to be careful here, because the distinction I was drawing in that truck — between accident and choice — is one that matters enormously, and it can be misused, and I have thought hard about getting it right.

It would be a terrible thing to condemn a parent who is genuinely trapped away from their children by real misfortune; life is full of car breakdowns and dead phones and true emergencies, and a mother or father caught in one of those, frantic and helpless, deserves nothing but compassion.