“Yeah, but—”

“What exactly could you’ve done?” she asks. “Okay, say you picked up the phone on the first call and drove over immediately. Who’s to say he wouldn’t have hurt you too? It’s not your fault.”

It is, I want to argue, but she doesn’t understand. For all of Elise’s bravado, she’s just a terrified young girl, as lost as anyone else. And for once, she needed me to be the strong one. She needed me to save her and I didn’t show up.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Detective Ward continues. “These things don’t always have a pattern that makes sense. It’s not like a roller coaster, there isn’t always an escalation. People always worry that they missed some sign, and sometimes that’s true, but it doesn’t work like that every time. Things could be going perfectly all right for them for a while, maybe they don’t seem violent or they’ve never even been violent with a loved one. Sometimes people just snap. Violence isn’t logical—it doesn’t follow rules or care about your expectations.”

I regard her with suspicion. Why is she saying any of this? Why is she trying to comfort me? I don’t trust her. I don’t know what she’s thinking, what games she might be playing. Worst of all, I don’t know what she’s told Elise, what she’ll say after talking to me here.

“Remy,” she says. “Sometimes people are in a holding pattern until they’re not. You couldn’t have predicted any of it.”

“I didn’t have to predict any of it,” I tell her. “I just had to pick up the phone, but I didn’t.” I think about the photos of Elise in her case file—every cut, every bruise evidence of my failure as her friend.

I think about all she’s done for me, about the moments she’s protected me when I needed shelter from the storm. I think about the promises I made to her, that I’d never leave her, that I’d always love her.

I failed to protect her then, but never again.

“You couldn’t have known,” Detective Ward repeats. “It wasn’t your fault.”

I don’t answer this time, exhausted by her insistence.

“Did she ever say it was your fault?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “If anything, she told me it wasn’t my fault.” But unlike Ward, Elise didn’t think the only person to blame was her father.

SUNDAY // AUGUST 13 // DAY 338

49.

Elise was discharged that Wednesday, with less than a week to the start of school. She moved into our house, staying in my room as the legal proceedings moved forward. Criminal charges were filed against her father, and an immediate protective order was issued for her safety. A social worker spoke to her at the hospital and saw that Elise was situated in our home. She told us she’d be checking in regularly.

I never left her side. We spent every minute together, watching movies in the basement all day, going for long drives at night when she couldn’t sleep, which was pretty much every night. We’d smoke and talk, or we’d fall into a steady silence, stare at the dark sky.