It happened again.
By February, Lily understood that apologies did not stop it. But understanding a danger and escaping it were different tasks. Her apartment was small, her savings smaller. Brandon knew where she worked and which roads she drove. His relatives knew the landlord. His uncle's department handled calls from her part of the county. Lily began collecting evidence because she needed something solid to hold in a situation where Brandon could make her doubt even the things she remembered clearly.
She photographed injuries when she could safely do so. She preserved threatening messages. She wrote dates in a notebook that she kept inside an old cookbook, a place Brandon never thought to look. In her phone she made a folder with an ordinary name and backed up what she could. It was not a perfect system. She was not a trained investigator. She was a frightened young woman trying to prevent her own history from being rewritten by the person who had caused it.
One February morning, she drove forty-five minutes to the county seat to ask about making a report. The deputy who took her name went into an office, returned after a long delay, and gave her a pamphlet about civil protection orders. He told her that without corroborating evidence, an investigation would be difficult. Lily later learned that Deputy Morris had gone to high school with Brandon. She left the building with the pamphlet folded into her purse and sat in her car until the dashboard clock had moved nearly an hour.
She tried again in early summer, after an argument had frightened her enough that she went to a clinic. This time her account was logged, or at least an employee told her it was. When she called later to ask about the status, the person who answered could find no corresponding incident number. The clerk suggested she may have misunderstood the process. Lily hung up, stood in her kitchen, and realized that she was beginning to fear the people she was supposed to call for help almost as much as she feared Brandon.
Anna had no idea. Lily told her she was busy and that work was exhausting, a useful explanation because both things were true. She stopped visiting Billings. She let voicemail messages go unanswered and then apologized for being difficult to reach. The distance growing between the sisters was exactly what Brandon wanted. It meant fewer questions and fewer places Lily could imagine going.
Cole noticed the sleeves first in July. Then the nervous glances toward the windows, then the sudden changes in her smile. He did not know the full story and refused to claim that he did. What he knew was that Lily seemed to be organizing her movements around someone else's possible anger, and he knew from experience that this was not how a person acted when she felt safe.