And that the father, meaning me, had demonstrated appropriate protective action in October and had since demonstrated “a tendency to position the mother, in the child’s presence, as a person requiring supervision,” which she recommended be addressed.

I want to be honest about how I received that in February.

I received it very badly.

I read forty-one pages about a woman who had known for seven weeks, and I got to a paragraph about my tone in front of my daughter, and I called Ilse Vandergraaf at nine at night and said several things I would not put in writing.

Ilse let me finish and then said: “Do you want to win, or do you want Nell to be all right at nineteen?