My child was in a car with the woman who had spent ten years poisoning me, and I did not know where they were going, and every heartbeat put them farther away.

The principal was still talking — something about procedure, about the guardian card being valid, about how she was sure everything was fine — and her voice came to me from very far off, because my whole being had narrowed to a single unbearable fact: Ottoline had my daughter, and Ottoline had already proven she would do anything.

I had spent days being so careful, so controlled, gathering evidence like a good methodical adult, protecting the case.

And in the time it took me to be careful, the woman I was building the case against had simply driven to a school and taken my child, because she was not playing by the rules I was so carefully honoring.

I had been fighting a legal battle.

She had been fighting for her life’s plan, and she did not care about evidence or courtrooms, and she had just reminded me, in the cruelest possible way, that a person willing to kill is not constrained by the things that constrain the rest of us.