When he said he believed me, I believed him, and I had not realized until that diner how starved I’d been for exactly that: one person in authority who did not look at me as a hysterical ex-wife, a woman imagining things, a liability.

Lachlan had spent fifteen years teaching me that my perceptions couldn’t be trusted, and his lawyer had stood up in court and told a judge the same thing, and some part of me had come to fear they were right.

Harlan Foss looked at my son’s notebook and at me and said I believe you completely, and it was as though my father had reached back through him to put a hand on my shoulder.

I would need that steadiness in the weeks to come more than I needed almost anything.

There are moments in a fight like the one I was in when the thing that keeps you upright is not courage or cleverness but simply one other person who takes you seriously.

Harlan was mine.