“Daddy… Mommy’s boyfriend hit me with a baseball bat. He said if I cry, it’ll hurt more…”

But enough to leave a mark.

While they were putting the cast on him, Ethan kept looking at me, as if making sure he wasn’t going to disappear again.

I didn’t do it.

I didn’t move from his side.

Hours later, when they finally let us go, night had already fallen, and the city seemed quieter, almost indifferent.

Marcus called me just as we were leaving the hospital.

—I already spoke with them —he said—.

I didn’t ask who.

It wasn’t necessary.

-AND?

There was a brief pause.

“They’re going to investigate,” he replied. “Lena arrived too.”

That name carried a different weight.

More complex.

—What did he say?

“Nothing at first,” he replied. “Then… he said he didn’t know it was like that.”

That phrase felt familiar.

Too familiar.

Like a more elaborate version of “it was nothing”.

“Do you believe him?” I asked.

Marcus did not respond immediately.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “But now what I believe doesn’t matter. What matters is what I do.”

I looked at Ethan, asleep in the seat, his arm immobilized, his breathing finally calm.

—Yes —I whispered—.

We didn’t go home that night.

We stayed at Marcus’s house.

A simple place, without too many things, but full of a calm that I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Ethan slept soundly, as if his body had decided to let go of everything at once.

I don’t.

I sat in the living room, in silence, going over every detail, every sign that I didn’t want to see before.

The excuses.
The awkward pauses.
The small changes in Ethan that I attributed to other things.

Everything was there.

I just didn’t want to put it together.

Not until now.

The next morning, Lena called.