It is a case you build, the same patient way I had built the case against George, one documented fact at a time, except that the facts I was assembling now were facts of safety, of reliability, of love that showed up and kept showing up.

I could not undo the two days she had spent alone.

But I could bury them, over time, under a mountain of days that were their opposite, until the two terrible days were no longer the truest thing my daughter knew about the world, until they were outweighed, outvoted, outnumbered by all the ordinary safe days that came after.

That was the work.

And it was slower and more important than anything that happened in any courtroom.