the voice physically struck her.

No, I said, still looking at Emily.

You keep talking.

She opened her eyes again, but she didn’t look at Linda or Mark.

She kept her eyes on me the way drowning people keep their eyes on shore.

There are papers in it, she whispered.

Notes about me.

Dates.

Things they wrote down.

Things that never happened.

They were going to say I was unstable.

I felt my heartbeat in my throat.

I rose carefully, keeping my body between Emily and the rest of the room, and looked down the hallway.

The office door stood half open.

From where I was, I could still see the living room and the front entry.

I told the dispatcher I was walking a few steps away to retrieve evidence while staying in visual range of the victim.

Then I moved.

Linda came after me immediately.

You have no right to go through private documents in this house, she said.

My right arrived the moment my daughter called me for help, I answered.

Robert moved to block the hall, but the sound of approaching sirens floated faintly from the street outside.

It took the fight out of him for just half a second, and that was enough.

I shouldered past and reached the office.

The blue folder sat exactly where Emily said it would be, in the top drawer of a mahogany desk.

I pulled it out and opened it standing there.

For a moment, the words on the page didn’t make sense, because they were too cold to belong to real people.

Typed notes.

Dated entries.

Lists.

Emily displays paranoid thinking.

Emily prone to emotional volatility.

Possible alcohol misuse.

Increasing resistance to family guidance.

Consider physician-supported intervention if she becomes irrational again.

There were screenshots of text messages stripped of context.

A brochure for a private behavioral health facility forty miles away.

The business card of a family attorney.

A draft petition describing Emily as erratic, fragile, and incapable of making sound decisions.

In the margin of one page, in Linda’s neat handwriting, were five words that made my hands start to shake.

If she leaves, move quickly.

I turned and looked back down the hall.

Emily had managed to pull herself up to sit against the sofa, but only because she was holding onto the armrest with one hand and my presence with her eyes.

Mark stood frozen.

Linda’s face had gone bloodless.

What is this, I asked.

No one answered.

The dispatcher was still on speaker.

I could hear her breathing, could hear her typing.

She told me to keep the folder with me and not let anyone take it.

Emily spoke again, a little louder this time, as if seeing the folder in my hand had broken whatever spell fear had over her.

I found it after he grabbed me, she said.

I told Mark I was leaving.

I went looking for my passport because he had my car keys again, and I thought maybe I could get out before they woke the neighbors.

I opened his drawer and saw my name.

She swallowed hard.

Linda had been keeping notes on her for eight months, she said.

Every time Emily cried after an argument, every time she tried to visit me alone, every time she