The big one, when it came, was silence.

Part of what held me back, I know now, was a thing that gets into every divorced parent and quietly poisons their judgment: the fear of being the difficult one.

When you share custody with someone, every concern you raise gets weighed on a scale that also holds your history, and you learn to second-guess yourself, to wonder whether you’re worried about your kid or just still angry at your ex.

If I called Elena and said Maya seems frightened of Julian, I could hear exactly how it would land — as jealousy, as sour grapes, as the bitter first husband taking shots at the new man.

So I softened everything.

I asked careful neutral questions.