Caleb left voicemail after voicemail until the court prohibited contact.
He apologized in one. Blamed stress in another. Accused me of destroying their relationship in a third. By the fifth, he was telling Emily nobody would understand her the way he did.
She handed the phone to the advocate without answering.
That was progress.
It did not feel like progress to her.
For the first two weeks, Emily slept in her childhood bedroom with the lamp on.
She jumped when cars slowed in front of the house. She asked where my phone was every time we sat down for dinner. She apologized when she used too much hot water.
One morning I found her standing in the laundry room holding a red sweater.
“What’s wrong?”
“Caleb hated this.”
I waited.
“He said red made me look like I wanted attention.”
“What do you want to do with it?”
She stared at the sweater for a long time.
“Wear it.”
So she did.
We went to the grocery store.
Nothing happened.
That mattered.
A week after the arrest, Emily had to return to the apartment to collect clothes and personal documents. The advocate arranged for her to enter while Caleb was prohibited from being there. I went with her, but I waited for instructions instead of walking in first.
The apartment looked ordinary. That was almost offensive. A plant needed water. Two coffee mugs sat in the sink. A grocery list was held to the refrigerator by a magnet from a weekend trip they had taken early in the relationship. Nothing in the room announced what happened there.
Emily stood just inside the doorway and stopped breathing.
“We can leave,” I said.
“Not yet.”
She went to the bedroom. One side of the closet held her clothes, sorted by color. On the top shelf sat a cardboard box filled with things Caleb had told her were “distracting”: a framed photograph of Madison, a bright lipstick, a concert ticket, the old hospital brochure for the job she had wanted.
“He packed these?” I asked.
“He said I could have them back when I was acting like myself again.”
I had to turn away.
Emily picked up the brochure.
“This is what he meant by myself.”
