Part 7
Her stomach turned.
Nora watched her scroll. “Clar.”
“I saved these.”
“Good.”
“No. I mean I saved them and did nothing.”
Nora reached across the table. “Saving them was something.”
Clara shook her head. “Not enough.”
“No,” Nora said after a moment. “But something.”
That was Nora’s gift and curse. She refused to make pain prettier than it was.
Rachel Kim’s office occupied the second floor of a brick building above a pediatric dentist and a yoga studio. Clara went alone because Mia became frantic when Clara put on shoes, so Nora stayed with her and promised not to let anyone in unless they could recite Nora’s high school locker combination.
“I don’t know your high school locker combination,” Clara said.
“Exactly.”
The joke was terrible. It helped anyway.
Rachel Kim was in her forties, with blunt-cut hair and the posture of a person who had no time for preventable nonsense. Her office held no inspirational art, only framed degrees, stacks of files, and a small ceramic dish full of wrapped peppermints. She listened while Clara spoke. She interrupted only for dates, names, and whether Henry had access to firearms.
“No,” Clara said. “He hates guns. Says they’re vulgar.”
Rachel’s eyebrow moved slightly. “Okay.”
The consultation did not feel like television. There was no grand promise, no immediate justice. Rachel explained emergency orders of protection, temporary parenting arrangements, exclusive possession of the home, the difference between criminal charges and family court, the importance of not blocking Henry from contacting Mia without legal guidance unless safety required it, and the many ways wealthy men used money to stretch proceedings until women became tired, broke, or afraid.
“He will likely argue accident,” Rachel said.
“It wasn’t.”
“I believe you. The court will need evidence.”
“There were witnesses.”
“Good. Witnesses change their minds, get nervous, become vague, decide they didn’t see what they saw. We move quickly.”
Clara hated how unsurprised she sounded.
Rachel reviewed the screenshots and photographs. She paused at one message from eight months earlier.
You would lose everything before I let you make me look like my father.
“Tell me about his father,” Rachel said.
Clara looked toward the office window. The yoga studio downstairs had placed a chalkboard sign on the sidewalk: YOU ARE ALLOWED TO BEGIN AGAIN. She disliked it immediately. Beginning again sounded clean. She felt contaminated by every choice that had led here.
“His father was cruel,” she said. “Henry says that’s why he hates losing control.”
“That explains a wound,” Rachel said. “It doesn’t excuse using one.”
Clara turned back.
Rachel slid a legal pad toward her. “I need a list of people who saw last night. Full names if you have them. I need anyone who has seen prior incidents. I need your financial picture as accurately as possible. I need Mia’s school information. I need to know whether there are cameras in your home.”
“There are cameras outside. Front door, garage, backyard.”
“Who controls them?”
“Henry.”
“Assume he can see when you come and go. We’ll address that.”
The words landed like small stones. Clara had lived in that house for six years, chosen the breakfast nook wallpaper, planted lavender by the front steps, measured Mia’s height on the inside of the pantry door. Now Rachel spoke of it like a compromised site.
At the end of the meeting, Clara signed a representation agreement with a retainer Nora insisted on putting on her credit card until Clara could safely move money.
“I’ll pay you back,” Clara told her on the phone.
“Sure,” Nora said. “With interest. I accept baked goods and emotional growth.”
Clara sat in her car outside Rachel’s office and cried for four minutes. Then she wiped her face, started the engine, and drove back to Nora’s.
That evening, Mia threw up twice.
The discharge papers said vomiting could be a concussion warning sign. Clara called the hospital, then drove her back to the emergency department while Nora followed in her car. The second visit took six hours. A CT scan was not recommended after evaluation, but the doctor kept Mia for observation because of the mechanism of injury and Clara’s concern. Mechanism of injury was the phrase the doctor used. It was clean and bloodless. Clara repeated it silently until it became grotesque.
Henry arrived at the hospital at 9:20 with his attorney.
This time the hospital had security waiting.
The attorney, a gray-haired man named Bell, asked to speak with Clara privately.
“No,” Clara said.
Bell looked disappointed in a mild professional way, as if she had declined a dessert menu.
Henry stood beside him holding a stuffed rabbit from the hospital gift shop. Mia had never liked rabbits. She liked sea turtles, horses, and one particular ugly stuffed dragon named Kevin who wore a sock because his tail had ripped.
“Please,” Henry said. “I just want to give her this.”
Clara glanced at the rabbit. Its fur was too white, its plastic eyes too shiny.
“She’s sleeping.”
“I’m her father.”
“You hurt her.”
The hallway went still. A nurse at the station looked up.
Henry’s attorney touched his sleeve.
Henry lowered his voice. “I did not hurt her. A frame fell during a chaotic moment. I am trying to be gracious about your emotional state, but you need to stop saying that.”
There it was: the correction of reality through tone.
Clara felt exhaustion sweep over her so heavily she nearly sat down on the floor. She wanted to be home. Not Henry’s home, not Nora’s guest room, some impossible third place where no one knew them and Mia’s head was unhurt and Clara could sleep without listening for footsteps.
Instead she said, “You need to leave.”
Henry looked wounded. “Clara, I love her.”
“I know.”
His face shifted.
That answer had not been in the script. He had expected denial, outrage, an opening to prove fatherhood through feeling.
May you like
Clara continued, “That’s part of why this is so terrible.”
For one brief moment something human moved across his face. Pain, maybe. Or the memory of pain. He looked down at the rabbit in his hand.
