For years, my stepfather kept my twin sister and me living in constant fear, as though our suffering was the only thing that satisfied him. One night, after beating us until we both lost consciousness, he carried us into the emergency room while my mother quietly told the doctors, “They just fell down the stairs.”

That evening felt different almost immediately. Instead of exploding with anger, Edric paced slowly in front of us, smiling as though he were choosing between two meals instead of two frightened girls. Chloe quietly reached for my hand, and I squeezed hers back. Years earlier we had invented our own silent language. One squeeze meant, I’m here. Two squeezes meant, Don’t give up. We no longer needed words to understand each other.

Edric stopped directly in front of me.

“Still pretending you’re brave, Faye?”

I tasted blood where I’d bitten my lip but forced myself to answer anyway.

“I’m not pretending.”

He studied me for a moment.

“I’m remembering.”

His smile faded.

“Remembering what?”

“Everything.”

For just a second, uncertainty crossed his face, and that tiny crack in his confidence reminded me why I had stopped living in fear months earlier.

Three months before that night, I had been searching through dusty Christmas decorations in the attic when I discovered my late father’s old smartphone hidden inside a cardboard box. The screen was shattered and most of the buttons barely worked, but one thing still functioned perfectly: the microphone. That broken phone became the most important thing either Chloe or I had ever found.