Chapter 4 - GOING BACK INSIDE
I did not return home alone.
Two days later, after the police released the house, Daniel waited outside while a victim advocate and an officer accompanied me through the front door.
The living room looked smaller than I remembered.
The fireplace poker lay inside an evidence bag.
The broken chair was gone.
The ceiling hook remained.
I stood under it and looked upward.
“Don’t,” Daniel said behind me.
“I need to see it.”
He stayed near the doorway.
In daylight, the modification was obvious once you knew where to look. Grant had cut a neat access opening near the attic panel, added a cross brace between two joists, and bolted the hook through the reinforced lumber.
It was competent work.
Grant had always been competent.
That was part of what made people trust him.
I walked into the garage.
A ladder stood against the far wall.
On the workbench sat a receipt from a hardware store.
Rope.
Lag bolts.
Steel eye hook.
Two-by-six lumber.
Purchased twenty-four days earlier.
The day after Grant first told me my anxiety was “becoming a problem.”
The officer photographed it.
I went upstairs.
Half my maternity clothes had been removed from the closet.
Not all of them.
Just the overnight bag I kept packed for the hospital.
I found it in Grant’s truck.
Empty.
My toothbrush, charger, insurance card copies, spare house key and comfortable shoes had been removed.
The officer asked, “Did you unpack this?”
“No.”
“Would he?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer was becoming unbearable.
In the kitchen, I opened the drawer where I normally kept bank statements.
Nothing.
Then I checked Grant’s office.
Paperless billing confirmations.
Business invoices.
Past-due supplier notices.
A letter from the Ohio Department of Taxation.
Grant hadn’t suffered one bad month.
His company had been bleeding for almost a year.
I sat at his desk and stared at invoices he had hidden while telling me business was “a little seasonal.”
Daniel leaned against the door.
“You’re done protecting him.”
“I’m not protecting him.”
“You’re still trying to find the explanation that makes this less deliberate.”
I turned toward him.
“Because I married him, Daniel.”
He softened.
“I know.”
“No. You know he hurt me. I have to figure out how I lived next to it.”
The victim advocate found a folder behind the bottom desk drawer.
Not secret documents.
Something worse because it was ordinary.
Bills.
Loan estimates.
Printouts of my house’s estimated value.
On one page, Grant had written three numbers by hand.
Mortgage balance.
Business debt.
Available equity.
Beside them was one sentence.
If she freezes access Friday, everything collapses.
Friday was the day after the attack.
My appointment with the bank had been Friday morning.
I had told exactly two people about it.
May you like
Daniel.
And my mother.
