“She is exaggerating the situation.”
My mother, who had kept her reservations about Eric to herself for three years because she believed that was what supporting my marriage required, moved closer. She was not someone who raised her voice to make a point. She did not raise it then. “A woman named Dana witnessed what happened. She stopped her car, she stayed with Claire until the ambulance arrived, and she gave a statement.”
Eric went still for a moment. “A statement.”
Officer Ramirez confirmed it. He explained that the paramedics had documented my account, that Dana’s witness statement was already part of the incident file, and that given my condition and the circumstances, the matter was being formally recorded. Whether it moved forward as a charge depended on the district review process and my own decisions going forward.
Eric’s face reddened. “I didn’t touch her in any harmful way. I didn’t hit her.”
The officer’s expression did not change. “Neglect and reckless endangerment of a vulnerable person are both taken seriously regardless of physical contact.”
That was the moment something rearranged inside me. Not because a police officer had used formal, official language. Not because my family was standing in the hallway. But because Eric still could not locate his remorse. He was right there, standing outside the room where I had spent the day with monitors on my belly and fear in my chest, and his entire defense was a technicality. He had not hit me. Therefore, in his accounting of the world, nothing had been done that required genuine reckoning.
He asked to see me. I said no.
