Sara stood in the dark so no one could see in. The car outside had been idling on and off for the better part of the hour, lights out the whole time. Staying on just long enough to heat the cab, then back off again. Fleeting flickers of light told her the inhabitants were sharing some kind of a pipe. Sara thought to call the police, but she didn’t want to be the girl who cried wolf. She had too much potentially at stake.

The police had left her with little more than reassurances when she’d called the first time.

“All you can really do is get a restraining order in the morning,” said the responding officer.

“But he broke a window!”

The officer shrugged. “It’s his house.”

She’d tried to explain all she’d recently endured—the increasingly explosive temper, the threats, the gaslighting—but the blank look on the officer’s face had made it clear he’d taken her story as little more than middle-aged housewife histrionics. Probably didn’t help  when she added in her desperation, “I think he’s going to kill me.”