At 12:17 a.m., Mara Collins knocked on my bedroom door like she was about to confess a crime.
She stood barefoot in my hallway, shaking in an oversized blue T-shirt, her brown eyes full of fear, anger, and something I had spent eighteen months pretending not to see.
Behind her, her seven-year-old daughter slept in the room I had painted pale yellow.
Downstairs, her ex-husband’s name was about to light up her phone like a threat.
