By July there was a substantiated county finding, three criminal cases, a forensic interview, four hundred pages of bank records, and eleven minutes of video with a timestamp.

You do not extract a confession from somebody who is already looking at all of that.

You send a number across a hallway and wait.

What I got was this.

Sole legal and sole physical custody of Daisy, with supervised parenting time for Mitchell at a supervised exchange center, reviewable at twelve months on the recommendation of Daisy’s therapist and not before.

A five-year order for protection covering Beatrice, Raymond and Brenda, with no contact of any kind — no letters, no gifts, no third parties, no social media.