There was just a house that had split into two houses with two separate doors, and a small figure standing alone in the yard between them, belonging fully to neither, welcome to walk through either door only by leaving the other parent behind.

That was what the whole thing looked like from three feet off the ground.

Not a negotiation.

A tearing.

And I understood, looking at it, that whatever I won in that courthouse would mean nothing if I let my son go on standing in that empty yard, made to feel that loving one parent was a betrayal of the other.

Dr.