The Evidence Folder

Aaron had a system. She liked that about him.

She had brought everything to his office — the voicemail from the first restraining order, the incident reports, the photos from the time she had finally gone to the ER, the text messages she had screenshotted and backed up to three different locations. He had spread it all across his conference table and looked at it the way someone looks at a map of terrain they are going to have to navigate.

"You are starting from the beginning," he said. "Not because this is your first order. Because we need the court to see the pattern from the beginning. The previous orders — they matter, but they are not the same as documentation. Documentation is what we have now, what we build from here."

She nodded. "What do you need from me?"

"Everything. Dates, times, witnesses, medical records, police reports. Every call you received and did not receive. Every time he showed up somewhere he was not supposed to be. I want names — anyone who saw anything, even if they do not think it was significant. Especially if they do not think it was significant."

She thought about the neighbor who had seen Drake outside her old workplace. The coworker who had noticed him in the parking lot. The friend of a friend who had mentioned, once, that Drake had asked about her schedule.

She wrote the names down.