I am not going to describe the footage of the assault itself.

It exists; it was watched by investigators and a grand jury and a court; it did its terrible, necessary work as evidence; and that is where it belongs, not narrated here for anyone’s consumption.

What matters, for the truth of this story, is not the violence in those videos.

It is the words.

Because my mother, in her certainty that no one would ever see the recording, had captured on it the one thing my parents most needed to hide: their motive.

In the first clip, in the garage, over my mother’s mocking narration, my own voice can be heard, faint and hurt, saying the thing that had started all of it.