Part 2:
The nurse barely finished speaking before Erin stood up.
“Do you want me to stay?” she asked.
I looked at the door.
For the first time that night, I had a choice that Scott couldn’t make for me.
“Yes.”
Erin pulled her chair closer to the bed and kept her phone in her hand. Diane appeared in the doorway a moment later, still carrying the same calm expression she had worn behind the kitchen window.
She looked at my bandaged scalp, then at the monitor beside my bed.
“I came to see how she’s doing,” Diane said.
I almost believed her.
Then Erin unlocked her phone and turned the screen toward her.
The porch recording was still paused on the moment Diane handed Scott my car keys.
Diane stared at the image.
“That isn’t what happened,” she said.
Erin didn’t argue.
She simply asked, “Then what were you doing with the padlock?”
Diane’s eyes moved to me.
“You don’t understand what it’s like trying to protect your son from someone who keeps threatening to leave him.”
My stomach tightened.
Not because I believed her.
Because I finally understood what Scott had been telling her.
He had made my attempt to escape sound like a threat against him.
Diane had not merely watched what happened in that yard. She had believed she was helping him control the outcome.
I reached for the nurse’s call button.
