I did not decide what was happening.

I decided not to decide, for about forty minutes, and to keep two children safe and one piece of plastic uncontaminated while somebody with more information than me caught up.

That is the whole thing.

That is the entire transferable lesson from this story and it fits in a sentence.

The instinct answer is dangerous because it flatters people, and because for every officer whose gut says this child is telling the truth there is one whose gut says this is a divorce thing, and both of them think they are being perceptive.

So what I say now is four things, and I say them in this order.