My husband pushed me down the stairs, and as I lay shattered at the bottom, my mother-in-law called my father and said, “Come get your worthless daughter and take her back.” Dad gave her only one warning: “If she has so much as a scratch, your family will answer for it.” They laughed at him because they had absolutely no idea who my father truly was.

“Any cameras?”

“Outside.

The interior system was supposedly removed after a renovation.”

Gabriel wrote that down, too.

He asked for the names of the contractors, dates of the renovation, and who had access to the home network.

At some point I said, “You’re asking about cameras as if a recording could exist.”

“I’m asking because the absence of a recording can also tell us something, once we know what was normally recorded.”

My phone rang.