Because she no longer needed to prove she could.
Two days later, Aunt Denise called.
“You went.”
Nia froze.
“How do you know?”
“Evan called me.”
“Why does Evan have your number?”
“Because I am likable.”
“You are terrifying.”
“Both can happen.”
Nia laughed.
Denise continued:
“How was it?”
Nia looked out her office window.
“Strange.”
“Bad?”
“No.”
“Good?”
“Not exactly.”
“What then?”
“Smaller.”
Denise understood immediately.
“Yeah.”
After Marcus died, Nia had inherited the responsibility of deciding what to do with the original phone video.
Denise still had the old device at first.
A phone so outdated that no current charger fit without an adapter.
The file existed in multiple backups.
Police copy.
Attorney copy.
HOA counsel copy.
Family copy.
Clips had circulated online.
But the original mattered because it included almost five minutes before the version most people saw.
Patricia entering.
Nia’s father asking her to leave.
The escalation.
The slap.
The officers arriving.
The silence after.
Nia had once believed the whole video should be public forever.
Then she became a lawyer.
She learned that evidence and spectacle were cousins who frequently borrowed each other’s clothes.
At fifty-four, she sat with Denise at the dining-room table.
The old phone lay between them.
Denise’s hands had begun trembling slightly.
Not enough to frighten her.
Enough that she complained.
“I hate this.”
“The phone?”
“My hands.”
Nia looked at her.
“You’re seventy-six.”
“Your father would say that is not diagnosis.”
Nia smiled.
“He would.”
Denise touched the screen.
“You know I almost didn’t record.”
Nia looked up.
“You never told me that.”
“I was scared I’d make it worse.”
“Why would recording make it worse?”
“Because sometimes people become more aggressive when camera comes out.”
Nia thought.
Denise continued.
“And I wasn’t thinking like lawyer.”
“I was thinking that my brother was outside half naked with angry woman and police coming.”
“I wanted you inside.”
“I wanted him safe.”
“I nearly put phone down.”
“What changed your mind?”
Denise stared at table.
“Patricia said he threatened her.”
Nia remembered.
Do not threaten me.
Marcus standing backward.
Hands open.
Denise’s voice lowered.
“I watched your father step away.”
“And then I heard her narrate the opposite.”
“That scared me more than anything.”
“Because I realized what happened and what she said happened could become two different things.”
Nia sat silent.
Denise tapped the old phone.
“So I kept recording.”
Nia swallowed.
“You saved him.”
Denise shook her head instantly.
“No.”
“Don’t.”
“You all turn recordings into magic.”
“Your dad saved himself by staying calm.”
“The officers helped by checking.”
Dispatch helped.”
“Management recording helped.”
“Property records helped.”
“The video helped with the physical part.”