The Aurora Police Department was quiet when we arrived. Laura looked tense the entire drive. She had barely spoken since the hospital. Therapy had already begun, but the process was slow and painful. Memories were starting to surface in fragments—little scenes she had spent twenty years calling discipline, only now realizing they were something far darker.
Bennett met us in a small interview room and placed a thin file on the table.
“This is about what happened when you were fourteen,” he said.
Laura stared at it.
“I told you… I don’t remember much from that year.”
“That’s common with trauma,” Bennett said gently.
He opened the file. Inside were old police reports from nearly twenty years ago.
“The first report was filed by a neighbor,” he said.
Laura looked at the date and went pale.
February 14.
“That’s my birthday.”
“What does it say?” I asked.
Her voice trembled as she read.
“Complaint of screaming heard from Carter residence at approximately 9:45 p.m.”
She looked up slowly.
“I don’t remember this.”
Bennett continued.
“The neighbor called police because they thought someone was being attacked.”
“What happened when officers arrived?”
He turned the page.
“They found you outside the house.”