I took the children’s things and almost nothing of my own.

I did not take: the folder in the office closet with my parents’ papers in it.

My passport.

The box of photographs.

My mother’s ring, which was in a drawer nine feet from where I was standing.

I got all of it back eventually, every single item, by agreement, without a fight, in the following March.

And Patricia Salgado told me later that this is the most common thing she sees in twenty-six years, and that people believe they will have time, and that the belief is almost always correct and it is the one time in a hundred that it is not correct that she gets paid for.

Part Four: Who Knew