Chapter 3 - A Name on the Envelope
The envelope was creased at every edge and stamped with a date eight months earlier.
My handwriting covered the front.
To Alex.
Please open this if I disappear.
For a moment I could not recognize the words, though I remembered the night I had written them.
Trent had locked me outside during a thunderstorm after discovering that I had called an apartment manager.
I had gone to the garage, found a pen, and written everything I was afraid to say aloud.
I'd slipped the envelope into the outgoing mailbox the next morning.
Alex should have received it within days.
He hadn't.
“Who gave it to you?” I asked.
“Your neighbor, Mrs.
Vale, yesterday.
She found it beneath a loose board in the shared mailbox after Richard replaced the lock.” The envelope had been opened and resealed.
Inside were my notes, photographs of a broken doorframe, and the name of a local attorney I had planned to consult.
A line on the last page had been underlined in someone else's red ink: I am afraid they will say I'm unstable.
I had been terrified, but I had still understood how they would try to discredit me.
Alex admitted that he had mistaken my growing silence for a request for privacy.
I told him that Trent read my messages and punished me whenever I reached out.
“Then we stop letting him speak for you,” Alex said.
Dr.
Ortiz returned with preliminary results.
She explained that trauma during pregnancy could become dangerous even when the baby's heartbeat sounded reassuring.
They were admitting me for observation, and I needed to report every new symptom.
I asked whether I could lose my daughter.
She did not give me a false promise.
“We're watching closely,” she said.
“Right now, you're both here, and we're going to protect every chance we have.” Ellis came to take my statement.
I described the stick, the threats, the family standing around me, and the recording.
Ellis listened without interrupting.
He also told us that Trent had not been arrested at the house.
He had claimed that the stick was for his father's mobility and that I'd fallen while trying to carry breakfast supplies.
My stomach turned.
Ellis explained that investigators were collecting evidence and that the response at the home was still unfolding.
Alex asked about Nicole's video.
The deputy's mouth tightened.
“That's one of the things we need to talk about,” he said.
May you like
“By the time we reached her phone, the original file wasn't there.”
