“Two things, and then we work. Never rely on his promises — not one of them, not in writing, not to your face. And never assume that shame will eventually make your family behave decently. People who lock a woman and three children out of a house have already shown you what shame does and does not do to them. Plan around the people they’ve proven they are, not the ones you wish they were.”

I must have looked stricken, because she set the pen down and, for one moment, let something almost gentle come into the flat voice.

“I’m not telling you that to be cruel,” she said. “I’m telling you because I have watched a hundred women lose ground they’d already won, waiting for a husband or a mother or a sister to finally do the decent thing and prove their faith was justified. The waiting is the trap. It keeps you looking backward at people who aren’t coming, instead of forward at the door you can actually walk through. You already walked out of one house that wasn’t safe and one that wouldn’t open. You know how to move forward. Don’t let hope for an apology talk you into standing still.”

She filed the first motions before the sun went down.

From the parking lot, I called my supervisor at the hospital, where I worked in the medical-records department.

Evelyn Price was a woman in her fifties with silver-streaked braids and a quiet that made people stop over-explaining themselves.