Chương 9
Elena sent apologies, deleted them, sent practical questions instead. Lucia answered about the yellow blanket, the storage of Elena’s belongings, and the memorial service the hospital offered for pregnancy loss.
Neither mentioned the courthouse.
At the shelter, Elena began attending group counseling because participation was required for extended placement. She sat near the door.
The facilitator asked each woman to describe one thing she missed from home.
Shonda missed her cast-iron skillet.
A woman named Kim missed the sound of her apartment radiator knocking at night.
Another woman said she missed nothing and became angry when the facilitator suggested taking more time.
Elena said she missed her kitchen table.
Not the chair with the rope fibers. The table itself. It had a burn mark near one corner where she set down a hot pan during her first week in the house. Marta complained for months, but Daniel drew a smiley face around the mark with a carpenter’s pencil and said now it had personality.
Marta scrubbed the pencil away.
The burn remained.
Elena missed sitting there before anyone woke, drinking coffee she was later forbidden to have.
After group, Shonda asked whether Elena wanted to walk around the fenced courtyard.
They made three slow laps.
Shonda had left a boyfriend who broke her jaw and then drove her to the emergency room, telling staff she fell from a bicycle. She had repeated the story because he held her hand while she said it.
“He was good in hospitals,” Shonda said. “Very concerned.”
Elena understood.
“People think bad men look bad while doing bad things,” Shonda continued. “Mine looked best when I was bleeding.”
Elena stopped walking.
“What?”
“I said mine—”
“No. I heard you.”
The sentence followed her for days.
Daniel had looked best at appointments. He carried Elena’s bag. He remembered medication names. He thanked nurses. When Elena struggled to answer, he rubbed her back.
His tenderness had not contradicted the abuse. It had protected it.
The medical examiner’s report arrived in late July, seven weeks after Mateo’s death.
The cause was listed as complications of placental abruption in the setting of blunt-force trauma and delayed medical intervention. The manner of death was undetermined.
Undetermined was not the word Elena wanted.
Grace explained that the report did not exclude criminal charges, but it made a murder charge unlikely. The district attorney approved charges of aggravated domestic assault, unlawful restraint, coercion, evidence tampering, interference with an emergency call, and criminal mistreatment of a pregnant person under state statutes broad enough to cover withholding necessary care. Marta faced similar charges, though not evidence tampering related to the hospital phone.
“What about Mateo?” Elena asked.
“The delay in care is included in the criminal mistreatment count.”
“That isn’t his name.”
“No.”
“What charge has his name?”
Grace was silent.
Elena stood and walked to the office window. Below, courthouse employees crossed the parking lot carrying drinks and folders. A man in a red tie tried to open the wrong car, laughed, and looked around to see whether anyone noticed.
“So he becomes context,” Elena said.
“He becomes part of the evidence.”
“That’s worse.”
Grace joined her near the window. “I don’t have a better answer.”
“You could charge them.”
“I could file a charge I cannot prove and risk damaging the rest of the case.”
“Risk.”
“Yes.”
“You all keep asking me to risk things.”
Grace’s expression tightened. “That’s fair.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“No. It isn’t.”
Elena left before the meeting ended.
She walked three blocks before Renee caught up. The summer heat pressed against Elena’s face. Her surgical incision had healed, but long walks still pulled at the muscles beneath it.
“You can be angry,” Renee said.
“I am.”
“You don’t need permission.”
“Then stop giving it.”
Renee fell silent.
They reached a bus stop. Elena sat on the metal bench and watched traffic move through the intersection.
A teenager nearby balanced a pizza box on one hand while texting with the other. A city bus passed without stopping because it was full. An elderly man cursed mildly and checked his watch.
Life continued with offensive normalcy.
“I thought the phone would make it impossible for them to lie,” Elena said.
Renee sat beside her. “It makes some lies harder.”
“That’s not enough.”
“No.”
“Why did I keep it?”
“Because some part of you wanted a record.”
“I wanted rescue.”
Renee looked toward the road. “Those aren’t always the same thing.”
The independent audio expert hired by Daniel’s defense found no evidence that the recordings had been digitally altered. That should have helped. Instead, the defense shifted strategy.
They argued that Elena selectively recorded moments of consensual religious practice during a psychologically troubled pregnancy. They claimed the restraints were used because she threatened self-harm. They produced text messages Elena had sent Daniel months earlier: I don’t trust myself when I get like this. Please don’t leave me alone.
Elena had written those words after the first miscarriage, when she had spent an afternoon sitting on the bathroom floor with a bottle of sleeping pills in her hand. She had never taken them. She had told Daniel because she was frightened.
Now the sentence belonged to his defense.
Grace prepared Elena for cross-examination.
“Did you ever ask Daniel to keep you safe from self-harm?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever consent to having him remain with you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever tell Marta that you wanted spiritual guidance during pregnancy?”
Elena rubbed her palms against her skirt. “I said she could pray with me.”
“Did you participate in fasting?”
“At first.”
“Did Daniel force you every time?”
“He didn’t have to every time.”
Grace shook her head. “A defense attorney will attack that answer.”
“It’s true.”
“Then explain it.”
May you like
Elena tried.
The first time Marta told her not to eat, Daniel stood in the doorway. He did not touch Elena. He only asked whether she wanted to make the family worry about another miscarriage. The second time, he placed the pantry key in his pocket. The third time, Elena stopped asking for food.
