The summer of 2022 gave me another reason to believe everything was going to be okay.

My middle son called me constantly asking to go to the amusement park—we went 11 times that summer. Sometimes his siblings came, sometimes friends and cousins joined us, and every trip made me believe our relationship was getting stronger. My oldest was driving, working, and becoming more independent, while my daughter spent so much time at my house with her friends that I joked I had three daughters instead of one.

From the outside, we looked connected. We were connected. That's what makes what happened next so difficult to understand.

Then, at the end of the summer, my daughter was registered for dance. I walked into a familiar dance studio simply to buy her shoes, having no idea that this place would eventually beco ...