“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.
“Emily, we have a crisis counselor on the way. We also have a medical team ready to document your injuries if you’re willing.”
“I’m willing.”
“Good. We’ll do that tonight if you’re up for it. Tomorrow, we’ll need a full statement. Everything you can remember. Dates, locations, witnesses, texts, emails. Anything that can help us build the case.”
“Will it be enough?” Emily asked.
“For what?”
“To keep him away.”
Officer Mendez crouched down so they were eye to eye.
“Yes,” she said. “It will be enough.”
Emily nodded, but she didn’t look convinced.
“He’s smart,” she said. “He knows how to talk to people. He’ll say I’m lying. He’ll say I’m unstable. He’ll—”
“We found three other women,” Officer Mendez said quietly.
Emily stopped breathing.
“We’ve been building a case against Caleb Torres for six weeks,” Officer Mendez continued. “We had reports. We had suspicions. We didn’t have enough to move until you called today.”
“Three others?”
“Three we know of. Two are willing to testify. One’s still too scared. But Emily, with your statement, with the evidence we collected tonight, with the weapon and the witnesses—” She paused. “He’s not walking away from this.”
Emily’s face did something complicated.
Relief. Guilt. Grief.
“They’re alive?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“He didn’t—”
“No. You’re all alive.”
Emily covered her face with both hands and cried so hard her whole body shook.
I held her.
Diane held her.
Thomas stood and paced and finally sat down on the arm of the couch and just put his hand on Emily’s shoulder.
Solid.
There.
The crisis counselor arrived twenty minutes later. Her name was Angela, and she had soft eyes and a voice that didn’t push.
She sat with Emily for an hour while the rest of us waited in the kitchen.
I made tea no one drank.
