Two on a floor in Bridgeport, one in a car for four hours in a shopping centre while I did arithmetic.

Those three days were entirely unnecessary.

They were the product of one false sentence and my failure to spend four minutes on a telephone, and no court gave them back.

Twenty-six months of litigation, during which I was, by the guardian ad litem’s assessment and by my own, a diminished parent.

A seven-year-old who stopped asking for things for eleven weeks.

Legal fees of three hundred and forty thousand dollars, of which a portion came back.