And that means, Mrs. Ashcombe, that the most dangerous thing you can do right now is let him know you’re afraid.”
So began the hardest two weeks of my life.
I went home to a man who had come to kill me, and I made him coffee.
I let him hug me though he smelled, in my memory, of that disinfectant.
I laughed at his jokes. I asked about his fake meeting. I performed the role of a wife who suspected nothing, while Detective Okafor’s team quietly did what they needed to do — the legal, careful, patient work of building a case that would hold.
I won’t detail their methods, because that’s their business and not mine to broadcast. But I’ll tell you what I did, because it’s the part I’m proud of.
I stopped being a victim and became a witness.
Under Okafor’s guidance, I paid attention. I noticed. I remembered. I documented my own life the way you’d document a crime scene, because it was about to be one, and I was determined that if my husband ever tried again, or ever spoke the truth of what he’d done, there would be a clean, admissible record of it.
