Chapter 10: After
Robert called me when I was already in the car.
"DA's office accepted the referral," he said.
"They're opening a preliminary inquiry.
Grace says it could take months, but with four women and documented false identities across three states, it's not going away."
"Good," I said.
"How are you?"
I looked out the window at the parking structure.
June was in her car seat behind me, making the small irregular sounds she made when she was almost asleep but not quite.
"I don't know yet," I said honestly.
"That's a reasonable answer."
I went home.
Luke was not there.
He had moved to his brother's house the day after the hospital.
We had not spoken since the consultation room — since he had given Okafor the address and looked at me one last time and found nothing to hold onto.
He had sent one text, two days ago.
*I know I can't ask you to understand right now.
But everything I found out about Marcus was real.
I was trying to protect her.
I should have told you.
I'm sorry I didn't.*
I had read it four times.
I hadn't replied.
That was its own kind of answer, and we both knew it.
Eli was with Luke's brother for the week.
He had asked to stay there — he loved his uncle's dog — and I had said yes because he had been through enough and he deserved something ordinary for a few days.
He had called me the night before.
"Is June okay?" he'd asked.
"She's perfect."
"Are you okay?"
I had paused.
"Getting there."
"Okay," he said.
"I'll be home Sunday."
"I'll be here."
I carried June inside and set her in the bassinet in the living room — the one Luke had assembled on a Saturday, the one that still smelled faintly of the cardboard it had come in.
I stood beside it for a moment.
Then I went to the kitchen and made coffee.
While it brewed, I opened my email and found the forwarded restaurant reservation from four years ago.
Daniel Marsh.
Table for two, 7:30, a place that had since closed.
I forwarded it to Grace without reading the rest of it.
Then I poured my coffee and carried it to the living room and sat in the chair beside the bassinet.
June was asleep.
Her face in the low afternoon light was entirely her own — nothing borrowed, nothing owed to anyone who had not earned it.
Dara had texted me that morning.
*Petra is home.
Thank you for coming to find me.*
I had written back: *You would have done the same.*
She had sent one word: *Yes.*
I didn't know what came next for Luke and me.
I didn't know if there was a next.
What he had done had come from something real — the fear had been real, the threat had been real — but fear did not make the decision right, and I was not ready to sort through what remained of us.
Maybe I would be, eventually.
Maybe I wouldn't.
I knew I loved him once.
I knew I didn't recognize him in that hospital room.
Both things were true, and I was going to have to live with both of them until I understood which one was larger.
June made a sound.
I leaned forward.
She had turned her head slightly, the way she did when something changed — light, warmth, the small shift in air when someone moved closer.
"I'm here," I said.
She settled.
I sat back in the chair with my coffee and watched her breathe, and outside the window the afternoon went on the way afternoons do — indifferent, unhurried, full of ordinary light.
She was here.
That was the thing I kept returning to, the fact that held when everything else was still uncertain.
She was here, and she was mine, and no one had taken her.
---
Sometimes the person who betrays you is also the person who tried, in the worst possible way, to keep you safe.
That contradiction doesn't make it right — but it makes it human, and it makes it hard.
Have you ever had to hold two truths about someone at the same time — love and hurt, gratitude and anger?
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