I came home two days early from my business trip, and the first sight that froze me in my tracks was my wife raising a wooden hanger to strike our terrified little girls huddled on the floor.

The next month was the hardest, and the best, of my life.

We moved out of the hotel and into a small, sunny house with a big backyard, just the three of us. It was smaller than the old house, older, the paint chipped in places, but it was ours. No Celeste. No fear. Just us.

I took three months off work, working only from home when I had to, so I could be with the girls every single day.

We built a routine.

Every morning, I made pancakes shaped like dinosaurs or hearts or whatever they asked for. We walked to the park down the street, pushed Sophie on the swing until she screamed “Higher! Higher!” until my arms ached. We did art projects at the kitchen table, paint all over our hands and the table and sometimes the walls. Every night, I read them two stories, then three, then just one more, until their eyes closed and they were asleep.

Sophie got her voice back.

She sang in the shower, she rambled about squirrels and the moon and how clouds were made of cotton candy, she chased the cat around the house yelling “Here kitty kitty!” at the top of her lungs. The silence was gone, replaced by her loud, bright laugh, and it was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.

Mara was slower to heal.

She still had nightmares. At least once a week, I’d hear her scream from her bedroom, and I’d run in to find her sitting up in bed, sweating, crying, convinced Celeste was there. I’d hold her until she fell back asleep, then sit on the edge of her bed for an hour, just watching her breathe.

She still flinched sometimes, if I moved too fast, if I raised my voice even a little when I was on a work call. She still apologized for everything, even things that weren’t her fault—if she spilled a drop of milk, if she forgot to put her toys away, if she had a bad dream.

I told her every single day that she never had to apologize for anything. That she was safe. That I loved her more than anything in the world.

We started going to therapy, once a week, all three of us. Dr. Hale was a kind woman with soft eyes and a room full of toys, and she helped Mara talk about the things that scared her, helped her learn that none of it was her fault.

But Celeste wouldn’t go away.

She showed up at the park once, when we were there playing. She stayed across the street, just staring, until I called the police and she left. She sent letters to the house, long, rambling letters that alternated between begging me to come back and threatening to take the girls. She called me twenty, thirty times a day, from different numbers, until I had to change my phone number.

Mark filed for a restraining order.

The judge granted it, full stop: Celeste was to stay at least five hundred feet away from me, the girls, the house, their school, the park. No contact at all, except for the supervised visits.

The first supervised visit was hard.

Mara refused to go, cried and clung to my leg, said she didn’t want to see Celeste. Sophie just hid behind me, her thumb in her mouth, silent again.

I knelt down in front of them.

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” I said, soft. “The judge said you have to have visits, but if you’re scared, we can tell the therapist, and we can stop. It’s your choice. Always.”

Mara thought about it for a long time, her little brow furrowed.

“Will you be right outside?” she asked.

“Right outside the door,” I said. “If you want to leave at any time, for any reason, you just tell the nice lady watching, and we go. Immediately. No questions asked.”

She nodded, took Sophie’s hand, and walked into the visit room.

I sat on a chair outside, my leg bouncing, for two whole hours. Every time I heard a raised voice, my heart jumped. But it was quiet. Calm.

When the door opened, Mara walked out, her face neutral, Sophie right behind her.

“Was it okay?” I asked, standing up.

Mara nodded. “She just asked us about school. She didn’t yell. She didn’t try to touch us too much. It was… okay.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

The visits continued, every week. Some were harder than others. Once Celeste cried the whole time, begging the girls to tell the judge they wanted to come home, and Mara came out upset, quiet for the rest of the day. But most of the time, they were boring, uneventful. Celeste was on her best behavior, because she knew the social worker was watching.

Then, one night, everything changed.

I’d run out to the pharmacy at nine o’clock, because Sophie had woken up with a fever and we had no children’s Tylenol left. I locked the front door, set the alarm, told Mara I’d be back in ten minutes, that she was the big girl in charge and to call me if anything happened.

I was gone seven minutes.

When I pulled into the driveway, I saw the front door was wide open.

The alarm was blaring.

My blood turned to ice.