“Did you expect this?”

“No.”

“Did you think he might hurt you?”

I considered the question.

“I thought he might keep changing what was real until I couldn’t prove anything.”

She studied me for a long moment.

“That is still danger.”

I looked toward the dark window.

Outside, the hospital parking lot shone with rain.

“I thought if I had recordings, I could make myself believe myself.”

Detective Bennett reached for the folder again.

“You did more than that.”

She showed me a photograph of the phone inside the freezer bag, its screen cracked but its recording indicator visible.

“You preserved evidence while trying to survive.”

I turned my face away.

Near dawn, a nurse told me a patient advocate had arrived.

The woman who entered was older than I expected, with silver hair pulled into a loose knot and a canvas bag resting against her hip.

I recognized her from the community center where I had first asked for help.

Her name was Lena.

She did not hug me until I nodded.

Then she held me carefully, as though I were someone returned from a long distance.

“I thought you might come,” I whispered.

“I came as soon as I heard.”

“I didn’t follow the plan.”

“You followed it exactly.”

“I was buried.”

“You stayed alive.”

The words were simple.

They did not make the yard disappear.

They did not erase Daniel’s voice or his mother’s hands or Mara moving the chair out of the mud.

But they gave the past a shape that was not my fault.

Lena sat beside the bed while the doctors checked the baby again.

She told me that Daniel and his mother had been taken into custody for questioning.

Mara had agreed to speak separately.

“She says she can explain some things,” Lena added.

I closed my eyes.

“Can she?”

“Not everything.”

“No.”

“But she may know where the family keeps records.”

I opened my eyes.

“What records?”

Lena hesitated.

“Old household records.”

Before I could ask more, Detective Bennett returned with a sealed evidence envelope.

“We found something in the freezer,” she said.

My heart began to beat faster.

“It isn’t another recording?”

“No.”

She placed the envelope on the table.

“Your advocate told us you had prepared an emergency bag.”

“I didn’t have time to take it.”

“Someone else moved it.”

The envelope contained a folded note, written in Mara’s handwriting.

I recognized the rounded shape of the letters.

Detective Bennett watched me read.

The note was only three lines long.

I am sorry.

I did not know how to stop him.

Ask what happened to me when I was pregnant.

I read it twice.

Then a third time.

When I looked up, Mara was standing beyond the glass panel in the hallway, escorted by an officer.

Her face was pale.

She lifted one hand toward the window, but stopped before touching it.

I could not hear her through the glass.

Still, I understood the question in her eyes.

Was I going to tell them?

Was I going to ask?

Or was I going to leave the past buried with the rest of the family secrets?

–END OF PART 2–CLICK “NEXT” AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE TO CONTINUE READING