The idea of walking into a stranger’s office and saying I think my ex-husband is a criminal and my son is in danger and I need help would have been unthinkable to that woman; it was too loud, too much, too likely to be dismissed as the raving of a bitter ex-wife.

I almost didn’t do it.

I sat in my car outside his office for twenty minutes talking myself out of it, hearing Lachlan’s voice in my head telling me I didn’t understand, that I was overreacting, that I’d embarrass myself.

And then I thought about the black card in my pocket and the six million behind it and my son’s face at the airport, and I made myself walk in.

It was a small thing, opening that door.

It was also the hinge on which everything turned, because asking for help — actually asking, out loud, from someone who could give it — was the exact capacity that fifteen years of marriage had trained out of me, and getting it back was the beginning of getting everything back.