Every incident had passed through the sheriff’s department. Every investigation ended quickly, with no meaningful follow-up and no unanswered questions.

And every zoning request Wade Cain submitted had received rapid approval from Mayor Linda Brooks and the same handful of county commissioners.

I sat in my rental car outside the records office as the sun dropped below the horizon, my hands cold against the wheel. This was no longer just about my mother’s assault.

I was looking at the town where I grew up — Fourth of July parades, Friday-night football, church dinners, porch lights, my mother’s apple pie — and beneath all of it, something rotten that had been growing for years.

My mother’s bruises weren’t the beginning. They were simply the newest symptom.

Then I saw my father’s name.