Chapter 5 - The Woman Who Had Already Survived Him
Elena asked to meet Karen.
The request came through their advocates, with no expectation that either woman would agree.
Karen thought about it for three days.
Then she said yes.
They met in a quiet room at the advocacy center.
I waited downstairs with Elena’s older sister, Julia, who held a paper cup without drinking from it.
For a while, we talked about parking.
Then weather.
Then nothing.
Finally, Julia said, “She keeps apologizing for taking the job.”
I looked at her.
“Karen keeps apologizing for agreeing to attend.”
Julia’s mouth tightened.
Neither of us had anything useful to add.
When Karen came downstairs, her face was blotchy from crying, but her shoulders looked different.
Less folded inward.
On the drive home, she watched the road.
“She thought nobody knew she was missing.”
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel.
“She said the worst part was hearing the wedding music.”
I pulled into a parking space because I couldn’t keep driving while looking at her.
Karen turned toward me.
“I don’t want the details to be the only thing people know about her.”
“They won’t be.”
“She films documentaries. She’s funny. She has a terrible cat named Kevin.”
I nodded.
“What did you tell her about yourself?”
“That I’m a nurse. That I hate olives. That I was very angry before I was frightened.”
I smiled faintly.
“She said she was, too.”
The friendship began there.
Not because pain magically makes strangers close.
Because each woman was willing to listen without demanding a version of the story the other could bear.
A week later, another name entered the investigation.
Hannah Vale.
She had worked at one of my father’s companies four years earlier.
I remembered her vaguely from an office holiday party. Quiet voice. Dark curls. A habit of checking the room before she spoke.
My mother had called her unstable after she left.
That memory made me physically cold.
Hannah contacted investigators after seeing the arrests.
She had messages from Gideon. A former coworker had copies of complaints she had submitted. There had been a private settlement after she resigned.
The agreement did not turn her experience into something she had imagined.
For years, she had believed speaking would cost her everything she had rebuilt.
Now she had her own attorney.
She did not want to meet us.
Karen respected that immediately.
“She doesn’t owe us solidarity on demand,” she said.
I was beginning to hear how often the people around harmed women expected even their recovery to be useful to someone else.
Meanwhile, investigators searched property associated with Gideon under court-authorized warrants.
Jess warned us that discovery could contain deeply upsetting material. Karen chose how much information she wanted to receive and through whom.
That choice became another small piece of ground she could stand on.
I wanted every detail.
Then I learned enough to wish I could return to wanting.
The recordings were not one terrible incident.
They suggested a pattern.
Locations.
Dates.
Women whose ordinary movements had been treated as something my brother could collect.
Some material was still being examined. Some women had not yet been identified. Investigators were careful about what conclusions could be drawn.
But the hidden camera at my parents’ house no longer existed in isolation.
Neither did Karen’s fear.
One evening, my mother called from an unfamiliar number.
I answered because I thought it might be work.
“Callum.”
I closed my eyes.
“What do you want?”
“To know whether your wife understands what she’s doing.”
I looked across the room.
Karen was watering the basil plant she had bought the previous spring. Most of it had died while we were at the hospital.
She was trying to save what remained.
“What exactly is she doing, Mom?”
“Destroying a family.”
“No.”
“You can’t see it now, but when this is over—”
“It won’t be over the way you mean.”
Martha began crying.
For thirty-four years, that sound had pulled me toward her.
This time, I stayed where I was.
“You should speak to your attorney,” I said.
“Don’t talk to me like a stranger.”
I looked at Karen’s hand resting against the flowerpot.
“I don’t know how else to talk to someone who watched my wife shaking and decided to blame her.”
May you like
I ended the call.
Then I sat on the floor beside Karen and helped her remove the dead leaves.
