Then I saw Lydia sitting on the couch in her pajamas, clutching her worn stuffed elephant so tightly that one gray ear was twisted inside her fist.
Her eyes kept moving between her mother and the doorway Trent had disappeared through.
I picked her up.
“I’ve got you,” I whispered. “I’ve got both of you.”
At the hospital, everything became fluorescent lights, hurried footsteps, and doors closing before I knew what was happening behind them.
Doctors took Cassidy into emergency surgery.
Lydia stayed pressed against my coat.
When I finally asked what happened, she looked down at the elephant in her lap.
“Daddy came home yelling about money.”
I stayed quiet.
“Mommy told him to stop because he was scaring us.”
Her fingers tightened around the stuffed animal.
“Then he got madder. He pushed Mommy down and hurt her while she was crying.”
My hands started shaking.
Not from fear.
From rage.
Every part of me wanted to find Trent.
But Cassidy was behind those surgical doors, and Lydia was six years old and terrified.
They didn’t need me angry.
They needed me useful.
So I stayed in that chair.
At 1:36 a.m., I asked for the 911 reference number.
At 1:41 a.m., I gave my statement.
At 1:48 a.m., I watched hospital security place Cassidy’s torn maternity sweater and Lydia’s pajamas into evidence bags.
I watched.
I remembered.
I answered every question carefully.
Not tonight.
Not this time.
Trent had spent too long believing Cassidy would stay scared, isolated, or too exhausted to make anyone look closer.
He was wrong.
Then footsteps came from the far end of the hallway.
I looked up.
Deputy Brock Timmons walked toward us with a notebook in his hand.
I knew him.
More importantly, I knew he had known Trent for years.
Whenever trouble followed men like Trent, Brock always seemed to find a reason to make their behavior sound smaller than it was.
He looked at Lydia first.
Then at me.
Then at the sealed evidence bag holding Cassidy’s torn sweater.
He opened his notebook and clicked his pen.
Then he said the one sentence that told me exactly whose side he planned to take—
