Chapter 4: Thirty-Eight and Counting
Grace Holloway's office was on the fourteenth floor of a glass building on North Michigan Avenue.
The waiting room had no magazines.
No soft music.
Just clean lines, grey chairs, and a receptionist who looked at Lily's cheek without flinching and brought us both water without being asked.
Grace herself came out to meet us rather than sending an assistant.
She was sixty, or close to it.
Silver hair cut short.
A charcoal blazer.
She shook my hand and then crouched down to Lily's level.
"Hi," she said simply.
Lily looked at her.
Then pressed closer to my leg.
"She's been doing that since last night," I said.
"Of course she has." Grace straightened.
"Come in."
We sat across from each other at a wide oak desk.
Lily settled on my lap with the small stuffed rabbit I had packed in the canvas bag.
Grace opened a legal pad and set a pen beside it.
"You said thirty-eight exhibits," she said.
"Yes."
"Walk me through the categories."
I opened the password-protected album on my phone and began.
Photographs of bruises — seven of them across eighteen months, each dated, each with a written description I had made the same evening.
Screenshots of Brooke's text messages, forty-two of them, ranging from personal insults to one that read: *if you ever leave Jason I will make sure you get nothing.* A photograph of my hands taken three weeks after Diane had required me to scrub her kitchen floor with industrial-grade cleaner without gloves.
A voice recording — eleven minutes — of Diane telling me that Lily was "slow" and that it was my fault for working during pregnancy.
A photograph of the broken vase from the night Jason threw it.
A written account of that evening, timestamped, created on my phone at 11:47 p.m.
the same night.
Grace wrote steadily.
She did not react to any of it.
She simply wrote and occasionally asked: "Date?" or "Witnesses?" or "Did you seek medical attention?"
When I reached the medical report from the night before, I slid my phone across the desk so she could read Dr.
Howard's exact language.
*Blunt-force injury to the left cheek, consistent with an open-handed strike.*
Grace read it twice.
"This was documented last night," she said.
"Within two hours of the incident.
I asked him to write the description of the mark specifically.
He also noted Lily's reaction when anyone reached toward her face during the examination."
"Good." She set the phone down.
"Now tell me about the prior incident."
I told her everything Carol had said.
The name Maya.
The age.
The settlement.
The attorney who had drafted it.
Marcus's name and location.
Grace's pen stopped moving.
"You have the name of the drafting attorney," she said.
"Yes."
"And the approximate date of the settlement?"
"Carol said it was eight years ago.
She wasn't certain of the exact month."
Grace set her pen down.
She looked at me directly for the first time since we had started.
"Emily," she said.
"If that settlement exists and can be located — even sealed — it establishes a documented pattern of physical harm to a child by the same individual.
Combined with last night's medical report and your thirty-eight exhibits, you are not looking at a difficult custody case.
You are looking at a case that ends before it fully begins."
"What does that mean practically?"
"It means Jason's attorney, whoever he hires, will look at this file and advise him to settle.
Quickly.
Because if this goes in front of a judge, Diane Bennett will not be permitted unsupervised contact with Lily.
Possibly no contact at all.
And Jason's role — his documented failure to act across three years — will be part of that record."
Lily had fallen asleep against my shoulder.
Her rabbit had dropped to the floor.
I picked it up without waking her.
"What do I need to do today?" I asked.
"Three things," Grace said.
"First, I contact Marcus in Minneapolis.
If he is willing to speak, his account of the prior incident — and the existence of that settlement — becomes part of our foundation.
Second, you do not respond to Jason, Brooke, or Diane.
Not one word.
Any communication from this point goes through me.
Third—" She paused.
"Do you have somewhere safe to stay?
Not a hotel.
Somewhere they don't know."
"My sister," I said.
"She's in Evanston."
"Go there today.
Don't tell Jason the address."
I nodded.
Grace stood and extended her hand.
"I'll call you this afternoon," she said.
"After I reach Marcus."
I stood and shifted Lily against my shoulder.
She didn't wake.
"Ms.
Holloway," I said.
"Is there anything in what I've shown you that concerns you?
Anything that weakens the case?"
Grace considered the question seriously, the way I had already learned she considered everything.
"One thing," she said.
"The sl@pping.
Jason will try to use it."
"I know."
"His attorney will frame it as mutual aggression.
They will argue that Lily was exposed to violence from both sides of the marriage."
"There are thirty-eight exhibits that establish the direction of violence in that household," I said.
"And a medical report from last night that has nothing to do with me."
Grace almost smiled.
It was small and brief, but it was there.
"Yes," she said.
"There are."
I walked out through the clean grey waiting room with my daughter asleep on my shoulder and the rabbit tucked under my arm.
The receptionist held the door.
In the elevator, my phone buzzed.
A text from Brooke: *You have no idea what you've started.
Mom is talking to her attorney right now.
Enjoy your little power trip while it lasts.*
I read it once.
May you like
Then I opened the locked app and added it to the file.
Exhibit Thirty-Nine.
