I wanted to let the Vanguards meet the part of me that had once held pressure on stab wounds and told grown men not to pass out in my trauma bay.
I wanted Celeste to feel what it was like when someone bigger decided your pain was inconvenient.
Then Maya made a small sound and bent lower over her stomach.
Rage had to wait.
Evidence could not.
At 4:14 a.m., I took three photographs.
Her throat.
Her eye.
The dirt and frost beneath her fingernails.
I wrote the time on a yellow sticky note because rich families love the word confused when poor women remember too clearly.
At 4:18 a.m., I placed my retired nurse badge on the kitchen table beside the photos.
At 4:21 a.m., I checked her pupils, her breathing, her abdomen, and the way she winced when she shifted.
At 4:24 a.m., I locked the deadbolt and checked the back door again.
Maya begged me not to call the police in their neighborhood.
She said Marcus had already told her they would say she fell.
I believed her.
That did not mean I believed justice was impossible.
It meant I knew justice needed paperwork before it needed volume.
So I called my brother Arthur.
Arthur and I had not always been close in the casual way siblings are supposed to be.
We did not have long Sunday chats or send each other holiday mugs.
