Chapter 8 - Cuffs and Consequences
Two weeks later, the preliminary hearing took place in the county municipal court.
My wife and I didn't attend in person—our lawyer advised us that submitting our verified affidavits and digital evidence was more than enough to bind the case over for trial without putting her through the trauma of seeing Eric face-to-face.
Instead, we sat in our living room, watching the sunlight pour through the windows while our baby slept soundly in her crib upstairs.
My phone rang around two in the afternoon. It was Detective Miller.
“It’s done, Mr. Ellison,” Miller said, sounding quietly satisfied. “The judge denied bail given his flight risk and prior record. He’s been formally bound over on charges of second-degree burglary, grand larceny, and reckless endangerment. His public defender tried to argue it was a family dispute, but the prosecutor played the convenience store footage and read the timeline of the text message. The judge wasn't having any of it.”
“Thank you, Detective,” I murmured, leaning back against the couch. “For everything.”
“Just doing our job,” Miller replied. “Take care of your family.”
When I hung up the phone, I looked across the room at my wife. She was sitting in the armchair, watching me with a quiet, beautiful expression of relief that I hadn't seen on her face since before Thanksgiving.
The nightmare was over. The parasite had been removed from our home, and the illusion of my family’s untouchable perfection had been shattered into a million irreparable pieces.
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Later that evening, my mother tried to call one last time.
I didn't answer. I pressed the screen to block her number permanently, watching her contact card vanish from my phone forever.
