Claire was quiet for a moment.

“Then this isn’t a divorce anymore, Elena,” she said.

“This is fraud.”

Chapter 9 — Documented

We took my mother to a clinic that afternoon, and a doctor examined her, documented the bruising, photographed it, and issued a formal report — and then we went straight to the precinct and filed a criminal complaint for domestic assault.

I want to say plainly that I did not do these things for revenge.

I did them because Claire had taught me, in the space of one night, a thing I had never understood: that the truth is not enough on its own, that the truth needs a record, dated and stamped and witnessed, or it becomes your word against a confident man’s, and confident men have been winning that contest for a very long time.