Cordell could see it in the way she held on, too tight, as though she could press the last three days back out of them.

She would blame herself for a long time, he knew — for not getting them out sooner, for every hour the case had dragged, for the simple accident of not having been the one in the house that afternoon.

It would not be fair, that blame; she had done everything right, had fought the long lawful fight and been on the very edge of winning it, and it was Fenwick and Fenwick alone who had done this.

But grief does not consult fairness.

Cordell hoped, watching her rock her daughters on the carpet, that someone would tell her, and keep telling her until it took, that she had not failed them — that the mother who spends two years fighting through the courts to get her children to safety is not the parent who failed.

The one in handcuffs was.