“I never saw his face. Only a shadow against a lamp.
He told me the world outside was dangerous.
That nobody was looking for me anymore.”
Her voice wavered, then steadied. “He taught me to wait.
To ask permission to eat. To drink. Even to cry.
He said it was for my own good.” She looked straight at Trevor.
“He didn’t want to love me.
He wanted to erase me and build someone new.”
For the first time, Trevor’s pen stopped moving.
The defense argued that Trevor suffered from a mental
disorder born of unrequited love. The prosecutor stood slowly.
“Unrequited love doesn’t buy four hundred cans of food
two years in advance,” he said.
“It doesn’t install a bolt that opens only from the outside.
It doesn’t build a nursery in a garage for another man’s baby.”
He paused. “This was not madness. This was a plan.”
