My son brought his boyfriend home for Sunday dinner, and the second I saw that young man’s face I went cold with a serving spoon still in my hand. Twenty minutes later I had locked him in my own basement and was calling the police — and I was wrong to do it, and I would do it again, and both of those are true.

He was not unkind. He said that what I had done was false imprisonment. He said it in those words and he said it twice so I would hear it the second time.

He said that if that young man had panicked and gone out of a basement window and broken an ankle, or if he had been somebody else entirely, I would have been the one in a car.

And then he said the thing I have repeated to about nine people since.

He said, “Ma’am, if you had put a hand on that boy’s arm in your kitchen and said I think I know who you are, will you sit down with me, you would have got to the same place by six o’clock and nobody would have had to take a statement about a locked door.”

He is right.

I was not charged. No charge was sought and Kai declined to make a complaint and I understand Detective Rincon had a view about it.