“I should have told you.”
“Don’t,” I said again, harder this time.
She pulled back just enough to look at me, and her face was destroyed.
“I didn’t know how.”
“I know.”
“He said no one would believe me.”
“I believe you.”
“He said you’d think I was being dramatic.”
“I don’t.”
“He said—”
“I don’t care what he said,” I told her. “I care what you say.”
Emily’s mouth trembled.
“He’s been hurting me for five months.”
The words landed like stones.
Five months.
Five months of my daughter smiling at family dinners and answering my texts and pretending everything was fine while someone held her under water.
“Why didn’t you leave?” I asked, and immediately hated myself for asking.
But Emily didn’t flinch.
“Because he said he’d kill Madison.”
The room went cold.
“He knew where she lived,” Emily said. “He knew her schedule. He knew her boyfriend’s name. He said if I left, if I told anyone, he’d make it look like an accident.”
Diane made a small, broken sound.
“So I stayed,” Emily said. “I stopped seeing her. I stopped seeing everyone. I thought if I just did what he wanted, if I was good enough, he’d stop.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
She pulled up the hem of her dress.
The bruises went all the way up.
Dark purple. Yellow at the edges. Some new. Some old.
Thomas turned away, his hand over his mouth.
Officer Mendez came back inside, her expression carefully neutral.
