Chapter 9: Line by Line

Gina picked up the remote and turned the TV off so hard the batteries fell out.

"Partner in fairness," she said. "I'm going to be sick in the chile."

Gina's son looked from the black screen to me.

"Was that your husband?"

"He used to be."

"He has a weird voice. Like a robot that's being nice."

Abe put the bike back on its wheels and stood up, and the apartment got smaller.

"Prewitt. You okay?"

"He just told the whole city he's been sleeping with her since before our daughter was born."

I looked at the three women's messages on my phone, and at the knit hat.

"He's going public on a button that froze a woman in labor," I said. "And he's smiling about it."

Abe didn't tell me to calm down. He handed me a dish towel.

"Then you'd better get busy," he said.

The protection order hearing was set for a Thursday in June.

Gina had found me a lawyer from a legal aid clinic who'd agreed to stand next to me for free.

On Wednesday afternoon the clinic called.

Holden had withdrawn his petition.

"Why?" I asked.

"If there's a hearing, there's a record," the clinic lawyer said. "Testimony. Your side of it. Under oath. He doesn't want a record."

So that was what the order had been for.

A headline, and then nothing, before anyone could ask me anything.

"Can I go within five hundred feet of him now?"

"You can go wherever you want, Ms. Prewitt."

Gina's sign had been on her fridge for two weeks. By then her kitchen table was full every night.

The neighbor had told her sister, and her sister had told her church.

A woman came with a bill from a car crash.

A man came with his mother's dialysis statements in a grocery bag.

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