Zola.”

Six months earlier, she said, Idelle had shown up at her door in the middle of the night with a backpack and a sleeping child.

Idelle’s husband had spent years sliding deeper into drinking, and what began as cruelty with words had, over time, become something with hands.

Idelle had stayed far too long, because he kept telling her she had nowhere else to go.

The night he threw a chair across the room near the baby, she left.

“They’ve been with me ever since,” Espe said.