Detectives recover deleted videos from his tablet. Not from the bathroom, thank God, but enough. Clips of him raging at Emma for childish mistakes, grabbing her hard enough to leave marks, forcing her to stand in corners and apologize for things she did not understand. In one clip, his voice is calm in that terrifying way some cruel people perfect.
“If you tell Mommy,” he says, “you’ll be the one who gets in trouble.”
The prosecutor plays that clip in court three months later.
Mark does not look untouchable anymore. He looks pale, small, ordinary in the worst way.
When the judge grants a permanent protective order and bars contact pending criminal proceedings, I do not feel victorious.
I feel exhausted.
But when I look down, Emma is drawing in the courtroom coloring book the victim advocate gave her. For the first time in months, she is not chewing her lip or scanning the room for danger. She glances up and gives me a shy little smile, as if checking whether it is safe to have one.
I smile back.
That is the part that matters.