Chương 10
“I trusted that he underestimated you.”
Noah smiled without humor.
“There she is.”
Elena closed her eyes.
“I’m trying.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
“Now you understand how annoying it is.”
The next morning, the burn specialist removed her dressing.
Blisters covered the center of her palm. The physician assessed sensation, circulation, movement, and depth. He spoke about healing in weeks rather than days. Scar management. Therapy. The possibility of stiffness. The importance of using the hand when medically appropriate, even when movement hurt.
Elena tried to bend her fingers.
Pain shot through her wrist.
She stopped.
“Again,” the physician said.
“I just did it.”
“Again.”
She looked at him.
He waited.
She bent them farther.
Tears rose before she could prevent them.
“That’s enough for today,” he said.
In the parking lot, she vomited beside Noah’s truck.
He held her hair back with one hand.
When she finished, he offered her a bottle of water.
“I hate him,” she said.
Noah unscrewed the cap for her.
“I know.”
She rinsed her mouth.
“I hate that everyone wants me to be afraid or brave. I’m tired. My hand hurts. I don’t want to become a symbol. I want to restore a book and complain about bad glue.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“It’s not available.”
“No.”
She leaned against the truck.
A woman across the parking lot recognized her. Elena saw the exact instant it happened: the narrowed eyes, the glance at her bandage, the phone coming out.
Noah stepped between them.
“Don’t,” Elena said.
“To her?”
“To you. Don’t make a scene.”
“She’s filming.”
“I know.”
The woman lowered the phone when she noticed them watching.
Noah opened the truck.
“Maybe get in before I become part of the discourse.”
At the temporary protective-order hearing, Ivan appeared by video from his attorney’s office.
He wore a navy suit and looked sober, exhausted, and deeply wounded by misunderstanding. The version of the barbecue clip shown by his lawyer began after his hand had left Elena’s wrist. It captured her striking the grill, overturning it, and smiling.
Dana objected.
The judge viewed Maya’s original recording.
The room remained quiet through Elena’s scream.
Ivan’s lawyer argued that his client had reacted impulsively during a heated marital dispute, that no prior criminal reports existed, that Elena had planned a divorce and secretly collected recordings, and that she was now using a regrettable isolated act to gain advantage in dissolution proceedings.
Dana presented the voicemail about locking Elena outside, the urgent-care photograph, and Ivan’s recorded threat in the car.
The judge asked why Elena had not reported those incidents.
Elena looked at Ivan’s image on the screen.
“Because each one seemed survivable,” she said. “And I confused surviving them with handling them.”
Ivan’s face did not move.
The judge granted temporary protections and ordered Ivan to remain away from Elena’s residence, studio, and mother’s facility. Financial issues were left largely to the family court.
Outside, reporters waited.
Dana led Elena through a side corridor, but Cynthia stood near the elevator.
The barbecue sauce was gone. She wore pale blue, pearls, and a pair of sunglasses that concealed most of her face.
No lawyer stood beside her.
“Elena,” she said.
Dana stepped forward.
Cynthia lifted one hand. “I’m not here to violate anything. The order is against Ivan.”
“You should still communicate through counsel,” Dana said.
“I want one minute.”
“No,” Elena said.
Cynthia’s lips tightened.
Then she looked at Elena’s bandaged hand.
“He has never done anything like that in front of me.”
The sentence was meant as shock. It landed as confession.
Elena pressed the elevator button.
Cynthia continued. “He was drinking. He has been under extraordinary pressure. The company, the board, these attacks online—”
“The attack happened first,” Elena said.
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
Cynthia removed her sunglasses.
Her eyes were swollen.
“I failed to understand what I was seeing.”
“You understood enough to tell me not to turn private correction into theater.”
Cynthia flinched.
Dana looked sharply at Elena, surprised she had quoted the email aloud.
Cynthia’s face lost color.
“You kept that?”
“Yes.”
“I was trying to calm the situation.”
“You were trying to keep the neighbors from hearing.”
“Those are not mutually exclusive.”
The elevator arrived.
Elena stepped inside.
Cynthia moved closer but did not cross the threshold.
“He won’t survive prison.”
Elena looked at her.
The elevator doors began to close.
Cynthia pressed her hand between them, forcing them open.
“I am not asking you to lie.”
“What are you asking?”
“To remember that one act is not an entire person.”
Elena held the door-open button with her good hand.
“No,” she said. “But eighteen months are.”
Cynthia’s mouth trembled.
For a moment, she seemed much older than sixty-two.
Then pride returned and straightened her spine.
“You enjoyed humiliating him.”
Elena thought of the smile on the patio. She had enjoyed the fear in Ivan’s face. The pleasure had been small, bright, and real.
“Yes,” she said.
Cynthia stared at her.
Elena released the button.
The doors closed.
Three weeks after the assault, Elena returned to her studio.
The landlord had changed the locks after a man claiming to represent Voss Holdings tried to enter with an outdated key. Dana had sent a letter. The landlord had become apologetic and then excessively helpful, installing a camera and offering to waive one month’s rent.
Lydia Moreno, Elena’s part-time assistant, had cleaned the worktables and arranged tools so Elena could reach them with her left hand.
“You didn’t have to do this,” Elena said.
“I did if I wanted to keep my job.”
“I may not be able to keep paying you.”
“I know.”
“You have Mateo.”
“I also have savings.”
“You told me you had six hundred dollars.”
“That is technically savings.”
May you like
Elena looked around the studio.
A nineteenth-century family Bible rested beneath weights on the central table. Water damage had warped the first eighty pages. A map of the Great Lakes waited in a humidification chamber. Small brushes stood upright in glass jars.
