“Three years ago,” Helena said. “I’m safe now. I just don’t have anywhere else.”
Torres tapped the notepad against her thumb and looked around the living room, at the coats by the door, the patched curtains, the children’s drawings.
“What your husband was doing,” she said to me, “came from the right place. But it’s a legal mess.”
My stomach dropped.
“So you’re going to shut it down?”
“No,” she said. “I’m saying if you keep it running like this, somebody will. These women need official protections. Documentation. Safe housing paperwork. Custody support. Protection orders. Medical and counseling referrals. An informal sanctuary run off private goodwill can save lives, but it can also expose everybody in it to one bad official decision.”
That was the bookkeeper in me she was talking to, and she knew it. Not the grieving widow. Not the frightened homeowner. The woman who understood structures, liabilities, systems.
Then she gave us a thread to hold.