PART 1
“This is my son’s house! You don’t belong here!” my mother screamed as she grabbed my pregnant wife by the hair while she lay on the floor.
That Wednesday, I left work almost three hours early. I was carrying a bag with a little pink blanket I had bought for our baby. I wanted to surprise Evelyn, my wife, because she had seemed withdrawn for weeks, far too quiet. Like an idiot, I had convinced myself it was just the pregnancy hormones.
When I opened the door to our apartment in San Diego, the bag slipped from my hands.
Evelyn, seven months pregnant, was curled up near the hallway, shielding her stomach with one arm. Her cheek was bright red, her lip was split, and a thin line of blood ran down her chin.
My mother, Nora, was standing over her.
One hand was gripping her hair. The other was raised, ready to strike again.
“You can’t even make a proper meal!” she shouted. “You spend Julian’s money all day and still have the nerve to talk back to me!”
Then my mother saw me.
Her expression changed instantly.
She released Evelyn and started talking rapidly.
“Julian! What are you doing here? Oh, honey, you scared me… Evelyn tripped. I was just about to help her.”
I didn’t answer.
I knelt beside my wife.
“Evelyn…”
She wouldn’t even look at me.
“I’m fine,” she whispered. “I fell.”
She said it like a child repeating something someone had forced her to memorize.
Then I noticed her phone lying near her leg. The screen was still on.
It was the Notes app.
There were only four lines:
March 13, 4:08 p.m.
Hair pulled.
Hit on right cheek.
Lip split after falling. Bleeding.
Something inside me shattered.
That didn’t look like a note someone had written after a simple argument.
It looked like a record.
A report.
Evidence.
And suddenly, I remembered too many things.
Two months earlier, Evelyn had shown up with a terrible burn near her ankle. My mother said she had accidentally spilled boiling soup on herself.
“It was my fault,” Evelyn had said.
Another day, she had a bruise on her arm.
“I hit it on the door.”
