The television filled the room with cold blue light.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Karla was still sitting on my sofa with one leg crossed over the other, but the confidence had gone out of her posture.
Her lawyer leaned forward.
Mr.
Mendez stood beside the dining table, one hand gripping the back of his chair.
Ethan remained in his armchair.
The folder on the screen was labeled with the words that had made everyone freeze: “Evidence against my mother.”
I turned toward him.
“Ethan…
what is this?”
He didn’t answer me immediately.
He opened the folder.
Inside were dozens of files arranged by year.
Not random screenshots.
Not angry notes.
Years.
The first folder began eleven years earlier.
Karla laughed too quickly.
“This is ridiculous.
He’s a child.”
Ethan’s eyes stayed on the television.
“I was a child when you left.”
That stopped her.
He opened the first file.
A photograph appeared.
It was the note.
The original note Karla had pinned to his chest when he was five years old.
I hadn’t seen it in years, but I recognized every crease.
I had kept it because I could never bring myself to throw it away.
For a long time it sat inside a small metal box with Ethan’s vaccination papers, school photographs, and the receipt from his first pair of glasses.
Karla stared at the image.
Her lawyer looked at her.
“Did you write that?”
She recovered quickly.
“Anybody could have written that.”
My stomach turned.
“Karla.”
She ignored me.
“My mother hated me for leaving.
She could have made it herself.”
Ethan clicked again.
A second photograph appeared.
This one showed the back of the same note beside an old photograph from the morning Karla left.
I remembered taking it because Ethan had refused to remove the backpack.
He had sat on the floor beside my kitchen table with the straps still around his shoulders, waiting for someone to tell him where he was supposed to go next.
The note was visible in the photograph.
Same fold.
Same torn corner.
Same handwriting.
Karla’s lawyer stopped smiling.
“What else is in there?” Mr.
Mendez asked.
Ethan began opening files one by one.
School enrollment records.
Medical forms.
