“I thought if I wore something impossible to ignore, you might actually look at me before he made me leave.”
That was such a strange, sad answer that I started crying.
Vanessa cried too.
For several minutes, neither of us said anything useful.
Then I asked the question that had been sitting in my chest.
“Why didn’t you go to the police after the stairs?”
“I did.”
She told me there had been no witness.
Evan claimed she lost her balance while they argued.
The bruises on her arm were explained as him trying to catch her.
She had no recording.
No camera.
No proof strong enough to turn an ugly relationship into a criminal case.
She left him instead.
Later, when she tried to warn a woman he briefly dated, Evan told everyone Vanessa was stalking him.
That woman believed him.
So did most of their mutual friends.
Eventually, Vanessa stopped trying.
