Chapter 7: Everything
Roy set his pen down.
"Walk me through it."
She folded her hands on the table, the same way she had when she was trying to stay calm, and she began.
"Six months ago, after the February incident on the stairs, I knew I needed to start keeping something for myself.
Something they couldn't find and couldn't take." She glanced toward the closed door, then back.
"Mrs.
Patel helped me buy the phone.
Cash.
From a shop across town.
I set it up under a different email."
"What did you record?"
"Arguments, mostly.
When I knew something was about to happen, I'd leave it running on the nightstand.
Under a book." She paused.
"There are eleven recordings.
Some of them are just shouting.
But three of them are clear."
"Clear how?"
"Clear enough that you can hear his voice.
Clear enough that you can hear what he says." She looked at her hands.
"In one of them, his mother is there.
She tells him — she tells him that if I go to the hospital, to make sure I go alone with him.
That I shouldn't be allowed to speak to anyone without him there."
Roy was very still.
"There's another one from a phone call.
He didn't know I was in the hallway.
He was talking to Dr.
Harlan." She took a slow breath.
"He told him what to write in the notes.
He used those words.
He said, 'Just write what we discussed.' And Dr.
Harlan said, 'Same as last time?'"
The room felt smaller suddenly.
"Same as last time," Roy repeated quietly.
"There had been a previous appointment.
One I don't have records for.
I think it was before I knew to keep anything."
Roy picked up his pen again.
He wrote for nearly a minute without speaking.
Then he looked up.
"I need that phone."
"It's at Mrs.
Patel's."
Roy looked at Mrs.
Patel, who had been sitting quietly in the corner throughout.
"I can get it," Mrs.
Patel said.
"I can go now."
Roy nodded.
"Go."
Mrs.
Patel stood, gathered her bag, and left through the front door without a word to anyone in the hallway.
Roy turned back to his niece.
"I want to be honest with you about what comes next," he said.
"This will not be simple.
He will fight.
His attorney will argue the recordings are inadmissible, that they were obtained without consent, that you were unstable.
They will say a lot of things."
"I know."
"But the notebooks were not recorded.
The medical records were not recorded.
And a physician who coordinated with a husband to falsify a pregnant patient's examination notes is facing a licensing board complaint at minimum." He paused.
"That tends to make people cooperative very quickly."
She looked at him steadily.
"You mean Dr.
Harlan will talk."
"I mean Dr.
Harlan will have a very strong incentive to tell the truth before your husband's attorney tells a version of it for him."
She nodded slowly.
From the hallway, a sound.
The Husband's voice, low and controlled, on a phone call.
She recognized the tone.
It was the voice he used when he was managing a situation.
Smooth.
Reasonable.
The voice that had made everyone around them believe, for two years, that she was the problem.
"He's calling someone," she said.
"Let him," Roy said.
"He has people.
Friends.
His father plays golf with a judge."
Roy looked at her calmly.
"His father's judge doesn't sit on family court," he said.
"And family court judges have seen notebooks before."
She almost smiled.
It surprised her.
"What do I do right now?" she asked.
"Right now," Roy said, "you do nothing.
You sit here.
You don't speak to him.
You don't respond to anything his mother says." He stood and walked to the hallway door.
"I'll handle the next part."
He opened the door.
The Husband was standing in the hallway, phone still in hand.
"We need to talk," Roy said pleasantly.
"All of us.
In here."
May you like
The Husband looked past him at his wife.
She didn't look away.
