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.

I am not going to itemise it. It was not extreme and that is exactly why it took three visits: a wrist, a scalp, and then the eyebrow, and each one had an explanation and the explanations were fine on their own and were not fine in a row.

His name was Emmett Rakes.

I did what you do. I documented, I photographed, and on the eleventh day I filed a mandated report, which is not a judgement and not an accusation, and which in this state I am legally required to make and about which I have no discretion at all.

There was an investigation. Six weeks. It substantiated.

An emergency order came out on the fourth of March giving sole custody to his mother, Suzanne, and suspending his father’s contact pending a full hearing.

On the twelfth of March, Roarke Rakes picked his son up from the corner outside that school at three-eleven in the afternoon, eight days after the order, in a truck, and neither of them was seen again.