Every time my brother-in-law drove me home, I would lose consciousness and wake up with unexplained aches and pains. My husband would only laugh and say, “You’re just out of shape, that’s all.” After the fourth ride, I secretly slipped a voice recorder into my purse and said nothing. That night, I listened to a phone conversation between the two of them that revealed my blackouts had never been accidental.

What had happened to me was enough.

I did not need to turn myself into the spokesperson for people I did not know.

One afternoon I opened the desk drawer where I had kept Julian’s birthday cards.

I read three of them, all signed with extravagant promises of loyalty.

I did not know what to do with the contradiction between those notes and the recordings.

Finally, I placed them in a box marked PRIVATE, not because they were evidence, but because I wanted to decide later whether to keep them.

It was the first time I had allowed the past to remain unresolved without letting it control the present.