October 3. Brought Patricia flowers today. Ten years. I still don’t know if the worst part is that I missed the signs or that I saw some of them and talked myself out of what they meant. This work does not bring her back. It never will. But maybe if I do enough of it, her death will not remain only a failure.
I turned the page with a hand that no longer felt entirely attached to my body.
Another entry. April 12. New arrival today. Woman in bruised denim jacket. Gave the name Helena though I suspect it isn’t the one on her birth certificate. Left arm healing badly. Asked if she wanted a place where no one would ask questions until she was ready to answer them. The look on her face nearly undid me. Same look Patricia had the first time she almost told me.
I looked up.
Helena was standing by the window, arms folded, eyes on me.
“He told me about Patricia,” she said quietly. “One afternoon in the garden. He said his sister was in a bad relationship. That by the time he understood how bad, it was already too late.”
I looked back at the journal. There were more entries now, years’ worth, each one sparse and practical and devastating in its restraint. A woman named Maya who found work in Portland. A mother named Tessa who left under police escort with a protection order. A girl named Lena who refused to sleep indoors for the first six nights and then finally cried because she was warm enough to rest. There were notes on bus stations, shelters, grocery receipts, legal aid contacts, safe routes, aliases, locksmith invoices, emergency prescriptions, daycare arrangements, diapers, boots, tomato seedlings, winter coats, trauma counselors willing to drive without asking too many questions.
I had married a man who, while I balanced invoices and paid electricity bills and believed his silences were emptiness, had spent years building an underground network of refuge one terrified woman at a time.
Then I reached the final entries.
May 2. Someone left photographs under the apartment door. Pictures of the farm. Helena in the garden. Clare reading on the porch. No note.
May 5. More photographs. Dates and times written on the back. Someone has been watching long enough to know my routine. I have been a fool to think secrecy alone is protection.