Notebooks Mark kept in storage, full of cold certainty. Emma tests boundaries because my wife rewards weakness. Children must be dominated before they manipulate you. Softness is the problem.
That is when I understand the most frightening thing about him was never his temper.
It was his certainty.
He did not snap. He wrote down a philosophy.
The trial begins in August.
I had imagined it would feel cinematic. It feels administrative. Metal detectors. Bad coffee. Lawyers with folders. A clock clicking too loudly.
When I take the stand, Mark sits ten feet away in a navy suit, solemn and wronged. I tell the story. The hallway. The cracked door. Emma standing fully clothed and crying. The bruises. The phone call. His changing explanations. The threat through the bathroom door. The hospital.
His attorney tries to turn my certainty into instability.
“How can you be so sure?” she asks.
I look at the jury and answer with a calm I did not know I still possessed.