Chapter 6: The Man Who Had Been Waiting in the Car
He was tall, unhurried, and he carried a leather briefcase that he set on the floor the moment he stepped inside without looking for a place to put it.
Her Father's brother.
Uncle Roy.
He looked at the room the way someone looks at a situation they have already been briefed on — not surprised, just confirming.
"Roy," the Mother-in-Law said.
Her voice had shifted into something social and careful.
"We didn't know you were coming."
"No," Roy said pleasantly.
"You didn't."
He crossed to the table, looked at the notebooks and the folded medical records, and then looked at his niece.
"Are you all right?"
She nodded.
It wasn't entirely true, but it was the best she could do.
"Okay." He pulled out a chair and sat down.
"I need about twenty minutes with her.
Alone."
"Absolutely not," the Husband said.
"Not without my attorney present."
"You're welcome to call your attorney," Roy said.
"That's your right.
But I'm not here in an official capacity yet.
I'm here as her uncle.
And she is entitled to speak privately with a family member."
"She's my wife."
"She's also an adult with bruises on her arms and a physician who has been documenting her injuries as self-reported clumsiness." Roy opened his briefcase and removed a legal pad.
"So.
Would you like to call your attorney, or would you like to let me speak with my niece?"
The Husband looked at his mother.
The Mother-in-Law looked at Roy.
Roy looked at no one in particular and clicked his pen.
They left the room.
The Pregnant Wife watched the door close.
Then she let out a breath she felt like she had been holding for months.
"You don't have to tell me everything right now," Roy said.
"But I need to know — is there anything in this house that belongs to you?
Documents.
A passport.
Anything you'd want to take with you today."
She looked up.
"Today?"
"If you want to leave today, we can make that happen."
She stared at him.
"He'll fight it.
He'll say I'm — he'll say I'm unstable.
That the pregnancy is making me irrational.
He's said it before.
To his mother, to the doctor, to—"
"He can say whatever he likes," Roy said.
"Two notebooks and a corrupted medical record say something different." He leaned forward slightly.
"I need you to understand something.
What's in those notebooks — that's not a family disagreement.
That's a pattern.
And a pattern, documented over months, by two separate people, is something a court takes seriously."
She was quiet for a moment.
"My passport is in the bedroom.
In the top drawer of the dresser.
He doesn't know I know where it is."
Roy nodded.
"Anything else?"
"There's a folder in the same drawer.
It has our marriage certificate and the lease for this house." She paused.
"My name is on the lease."
Roy wrote something on the legal pad.
"I also have a phone," she said.
"A second one.
A cheap one I bought six months ago.
I kept it at Mrs.
Patel's."
Roy stopped writing.
He looked at her.
"What's on it?" he asked carefully.
May you like
She met his eyes.
"Everything," she said.
