A child worked out, in a room with a stranger, that the difference between a mother who is required to appear and a mother who may appear is the difference between something you can rely on and something you have to hope for — and she chose the requirement, because she had already learned, on one Saturday afternoon, exactly what adults do when the thing is optional.

That sentence is the reason the visitation order says shall and not may, and it is the reason it has a minimum number of hours in it, and it is the reason Simone Gaddis has driven an hour and forty minutes each way on fifty-one Saturdays.

My daughter built that clause.

At ten.

I did not know it was in there until I read page fourteen, and I had to put the report down and go outside.