Travis and his brother are currently in the county jail waiting for their trial dates. Kayla broke the lease on the Maple Street house that very afternoon. She and Ellie moved into my spare bedroom.

We packed their things in garbage bags and boxes, and we didn’t leave a single scrap of Travis’s behind.

I should feel some grand sense of victory. I should feel like a hero. But that is the part nobody tells you about when you win. Mostly, you just feel tired.

We sat in my small kitchen last Tuesday. The radiator was clanking, and the smell of garlic and boiling pasta filled the room. Kayla was setting the table, her face looking younger and lighter than it had in years. Ellie was sitting at the table, humming to herself, drawing on a new pad of paper I had bought her.

She was using a bright pink crayon, coloring a big, messy castle with a giant yellow sun.

“Can we have garlic bread, Grandma?” Ellie asked, looking up with a wide, toothy grin.

“Of course we can, sweetie,” I said, reaching into the bread box.

I looked at the drawing on the table. There were only three figures in this one. Ellie, her mommy, and me, all holding hands under the pink castle. The navy blue crayon was gone. I had thrown it in the trash bin behind the school that very first day, and I had never looked back.

We are safe now. The house is loud and messy, and we are learning how to breathe again. But every time the phone rings after dark, my hand still hesitates before I pick it up. You win, and then it is just a Tuesday again, but you never quite forget the smell of the cheap wax.