“I found an advertisement for the boutique under her name. That led to a civil complaint against her. A former business partner alleges she used the same boutique story to solicit money.”
“Alleges,” I repeated.
“Yes. We still need records. I shouldn’t have phrased that as though I already knew where your money went.”
She turned the laptop. There was Lennox’s name, a case number, and a claim that money intended for inventory had gone toward a waterfront condominium.
My eyes stopped moving.
“She bought somewhere to live?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Outside, a car door slammed. I flinched so hard the spoon rattled.
Evelyn closed the laptop.
“First, we take care of what happened to you.”
A quiet knock came from the side door. My neighbor June stood behind the glass with the grocery bags still looped over one wrist.
“I put the frozen things away,” she said when I let her in. “Then I thought, what on earth am I doing worrying about peas?”
She set the bags down and reached toward my cheek, stopping short of touching it.
“I saw everything.”
“I know.”
“My doorbell camera may have caught it, too.”
I glanced toward the front windows. Some childish part of me still expected Terrence to come running back, horrified by what he had allowed.
June followed my eyes.
“He left with her.”
I nodded once.
Evelyn asked whether I wanted to report the assault.
I pressed the washcloth beneath my jaw. I had spent most of my life trying not to make trouble for my family. Now I sat in my own dining room, bleeding into linen I had embroidered while pregnant with my son.
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
CHAPTER 2 – What He Carried
The officer photographed my face beneath the kitchen light.
June gave her statement without softening a word. Her camera had captured the edge of my porch, the sound of the slap, and Lennox shouting through the locked door afterward.
“You’ll open it when you understand what this will cost you.”
I hadn’t heard that part from upstairs.
At urgent care, a nurse examined my mouth and jaw. Nothing was broken. She said it gently, as though she understood that broken bones were not the only measure of harm.
June drove me home after dark.
