Derek lowered his voice.
“I’m trying to protect everyone.”
“Then leave my porch.”
He opened the folder and laid a page against the doorframe.
“Just read it.”
The statement was written as if I had invited Gloria into my yard and deliberately frightened her with a recording.
It also said the police had confirmed I had been helping her granddaughter contact the family.
Both claims were false.
“Who wrote this?”
I asked.
“The family’s attorney.”
“Then the attorney can send it to mine.”
He stared at me long enough that I could hear the faint clicking of the ceiling fan inside.
“You have no idea what you’re stepping into.”
“Goodbye, Derek.”
I closed the door before he could answer.
My hands trembled after the lock caught.
I had been calm in front of him because I didn’t want to give him the reaction he seemed to expect.
Alone, I was terrified.
I saved the camera recording of the exchange, wrote down the time, and sent both to Mina.
Gloria called me that night.
I let it go to voicemail, then listened with my attorney on the line.
“Evan, this is Gloria.
I was wrong to hit you.”
Her voice sounded hoarse and tired.
“I need to know if that officer really spoke to Molly.”
There was a long pause.
“Derek says the officer invented it to make me calm down.”
Mina advised me not to return the call directly.
Instead she offered to arrange a conversation through a victim advocate if Gloria wanted information the police were permitted to share.
I agreed.
Then I called Gloria’s sister, Marian, whose number I had from an old neighborhood contact list.
Marian lived an hour away and sounded startled to hear from me.
She had been trying to reach Gloria for several weeks.
“Derek says she’s too upset for company,” Marian explained.
“I was worried.”
“I’m not calling to take sides in a family dispute,” I said.
“But she could use someone who isn’t in the middle of this.”
Marian thanked me and asked whether Gloria was safe.
I told her the truth.
“I don’t know.”
Marian arrived the next morning with a casserole dish and a small overnight bag.
Derek met her in the driveway.
I watched from my kitchen window as they argued beside his truck.
Marian was a compact woman with short white hair and the determination of someone who had taught middle school for thirty years.
She refused to go away.
