She did not open with protocol.
She opened with honesty.
“I’m going to ask some hard things,” she said. “You can tell me if you need a break.”
Mia nodded.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
Mia’s eyes stayed on Goliath.
“Because Buster was hurt.”
Avery waited.
“And because I wasn’t supposed to tell.”
There it was.
The center of it.
Not just the violence.
The rule around the violence.
The commandment children in bad homes learn faster than multiplication.
Do not make the bad thing bigger by speaking it aloud.
“Who told you not to tell?” Avery asked gently.
Mia went quiet.
The silence stretched.
Then she whispered, “Mom said he gets stressed and I make it worse when I cry.”
Avery wrote that down.
Every adult in the room felt the air change.
Mia licked dry lips.
“Mom says he’s important.”
Important.
Mike hated that word with sudden intensity.
He’d known men like that.
Men whose jobs and smiles and golf shirts and donation checks made people hand them the benefit of every doubt they had.
Men who thought the world would protect their image before it protected a child.
“Important where?” Avery asked.
Mia shrugged.
“At his office. At church things. At school nights. Everywhere.”
Dana’s jaw clenched.
Avery kept her tone level.
“Did your mom see him hurt Buster?”
Mia nodded.
“Did she see him hurt you?”
Another nod.
“Did she ever try to stop him?”
This time Mia hesitated.
It wasn’t the hesitation of a child searching for memory.
It was the hesitation of a child trying to decide whether the truth would break the last bridge she still wanted to believe in.
Finally, she said, “Sometimes she said my name.”
Avery leaned forward slightly.
“Like how?”
Mia’s voice got smaller.
“Like, ‘Mia, look what you made him do.’”
Mike had seen engines seize with less violence than the look that passed over Dana’s face.
Avery did not react visibly.
That was probably why she was good at her job.
But she wrote for a long time before asking anything else.
When the questions were done, Mia looked utterly wrung out.
Avery closed the pad.
“You were brave,” she said.
Mia shook her head without opening her eyes.
“No.”
Avery waited.
