I looked back at the journal. There were more entries now, years’ worth, each one sparse and practical and devastating in its restraint. A woman named Maya who found work in Portland. A mother named Tessa who left under police escort with a protection order. A girl named Lena who refused to sleep indoors for the first six nights and then finally cried because she was warm enough to rest. There were notes on bus stations, shelters, grocery receipts, legal aid contacts, safe routes, aliases, locksmith invoices, emergency prescriptions, daycare arrangements, diapers, boots, tomato seedlings, winter coats, trauma counselors willing to drive without asking too many questions.
I had married a man who, while I balanced invoices and paid electricity bills and believed his silences were emptiness, had spent years building an underground network of refuge one terrified woman at a time.
Then I reached the final entries.
May 2. Someone left photographs under the apartment door. Pictures of the farm. Helena in the garden. Clare reading on the porch. No note.