I said I could go to a clinic once the door was secured. She looked at my cheek and asked the question again, more carefully.
"I do not want to make this larger," I said.
"You can have an injury checked without deciding the rest right now."
That was the first useful distinction anyone offered me that morning.
The officers photographed the frame, the broken chain, and the glass beside the bookcase. I gave an account without trying to sound like the person responsible for making everybody calm.
I told them about stopping the payments. I also told them about catching Paige's wrist.
It frightened me to include that part. Leaving it out would have made the report less accurate and given me something new to fear when they spoke to her.
Grant asked whether there had been any weapons. I said I had seen none.
The answer was true. Later, people would examine it beside the weapon found in my couch, and I would hate how vulnerable a truthful sentence could become when someone else arranged the surroundings.
My neighbor Denise Cole opened her door while the officers were in the hallway. She was a retired postal worker who knew everybody's ordinary schedule without appearing to watch them.
"I heard the crash," she said. "And I heard her tell them to leave."
The officers took her information. She did not claim to have seen inside my apartment.
I wanted her account to prove everything. I also knew it mattered that she did not pretend it did.
Walter Sims, the property manager, arrived with a maintenance worker after I called the emergency number. He looked at the frame and swore under his breath before apologizing.
"Do you have somewhere you can wait?"
I called Sergeant Talia Brooks. She answered on the third ring, sounding annoyed until she heard me say my name twice.
She came with a jacket, a travel mug, and no request that I explain how I had allowed things to get this bad.
At the clinic, I described the door striking my cheek and the shove into the bookcase. The examiner documented bruising and shoulder pain, checked for more serious injury, and gave me follow-up instructions.
Talia sat beside me while I read them. She offered to call my unit, but I wanted to make that call myself.
Captain Mara Vega listened without interrupting. I had expected questions about why my family knew my address or whether I had done something to inflame the disagreement.
Instead, she asked where I would be that night and whether I felt safe returning home.
"The lock will be repaired," I said.
"That answers a different question."
I looked at Talia, who was studying the floor with the deliberate expression of somebody refusing to say she had already made the same point.
I stayed with her that night after Juniper was safely settled in her spare room. Before leaving my apartment, I photographed the repair and collected the papers the officers had given me.
The small indoor camera on my bookshelf had recorded part of the living room during the confrontation. I used it when I was away to check on Juniper and had left event recording enabled.
I exported the morning's files with the date and time settings intact. Watching myself pressed against the bookcase made me feel sick, so I stopped playback early and kept the complete export.
I did not yet know what mattered in the rest of it. I knew only that I should not choose what to preserve based on what I could bear to watch.
Vega called once more that evening. She reminded me to report any renewed contact and follow the instructions concerning the work equipment.
Then her voice softened slightly.
"Being their daughter does not make this something you have to handle alone."
At Talia's kitchen table, I wrote the incident number on the first page of a new notebook. Underneath it, I wrote what Dad had said about Friday.
I wanted the words outside my head. I had no idea how soon someone would ask whether I had made them up afterward.
===
On Thursday, I returned to the apartment with Talia to collect uniforms and enough clothes for several days. The repaired latch worked, but I checked it twice before stepping away.