Delaney sat with her hands folded below the edge of the table, out of view, and she had cut her hair short since I’d last seen her.

She never once looked my way.

Ms.

Vance handed a folder to the clerk.

“My client left the children with a sitter.

The sitter didn’t show up.

That’s a lapse in judgment, not abandonment, and it doesn’t justify the father removing two children from the house at two in the morning without a word to their mother.”

“Micah’s the one who called me,” I said.