“He’s changing the story,” she said.
“His lawyer is presenting a defense,” I answered.
“We need to let investigators evaluate it.”
She pointed at the television.
“Alice said he drove.”
“And Alice’s statement matters,” I replied.
“But a public argument won’t make Lena safer.”
The next day Gwen approached Sofia outside the rehabilitation clinic.
She offered to pay for a portion of Lena’s therapy costs if Sofia agreed to stop talking to reporters.
Sofia declined and immediately reported the conversation to the detective.
Later she called me and sounded more angry than frightened.
“She spoke as if my daughter’s pain was a misunderstanding we could settle over coffee,” Sofia said.
I told her she had handled it with more composure than I might have managed.
“I wanted to shout,” Sofia admitted.
“Instead I asked her to leave.”
We discussed how charity could become coercion when it came with conditions designed to protect the giver.
Sofia had accepted help from strangers who expected nothing beyond a thank-you.
She had declined help from a wealthy neighbor who wanted silence in return.
The dollar amounts were less important than the difference in terms.
That weekend the hospital approved Lena for a short home visit.
Sofia organized the living room so her daughter could enter without navigating the narrow hallway.
Maya helped move a bookshelf and measure a temporary ramp.
I brought dinner and stayed long enough to wash dishes.
Lena sat beside the window watching children play in the courtyard.
She told me she had begun keeping a private journal about rehabilitation.
“Not because I’m a hero,” she said.
“Because one day I’ll want to remember who I was when this started.”
I asked whether she wanted to share anything from it.
“Not yet,” she replied.
I respected that answer.
Some stories belong first to the people who lived them, even when others have been injured alongside them.
Patrick Lyle agreed to a recorded interview after his lawyer reviewed the evidence linking him to my garage.
According to the case summary later provided to victims, he admitted Gwen had asked him to retrieve a camera recorder.
She told him the device contained private images taken without her consent.
He was offered two thousand dollars for the equipment and another five hundred if he completed the job before dawn.
Patrick said he believed he was recovering stolen property.
He also admitted he entered a locked building without permission and damaged the window in the process.
