The first time Investigator Carter asked whether I wanted to watch the recording, I said no.

I was sitting upright in a hospital bed, holding a paper cup that had gone soft where my fingers kept pressing into it.

My throat hurt whenever I swallowed.

A nurse had just adjusted the pillows behind me, and the room still smelled faintly of the soap she had used to wash her hands.

Carter did not seem surprised by my answer.

“You don’t have to see it today,” he said.

“You don’t have to see it at all for us to take what happened seriously.”

I looked at the folder on his lap.

“But you’ve seen it?”

“Yes.”

“And Mark?”

“He is in custody.

The investigation is ongoing.”

I waited for the words to make me feel safe.

They didn’t.

For so long, Mark had been the person who decided what everyone else was allowed to say about our home.

I could still hear him warning me that nobody would believe a woman who made trouble for her husband.

I had believed him often enough that I wasn’t sure how to stop.