"You did the right thing, Nora. You didn't fall apart. You followed the paper. Your dad would've been proud."
I put my hand over my mouth, and for the first time since Tuesday morning, I cried without holding it back.
Ray reached across the table and put his big, rough hand over mine.
"Eat your eggs," he said. "We've got work to do."
By Thursday afternoon I had a lawyer.
Tamika Reyes was a family law attorney with an office above a bakery in Fairlawn and a very quiet way of saying frightening things. She was forty-four, with cropped natural hair and a legal pad she covered in tiny, precise handwriting.
She listened to my whole story without interrupting.
When I finished, she said, "First, I'm sorry. Second, I'm going to give you rules, and I need you to follow every one of them."
"Okay."
"One. Stay in the house. If you leave with Eli, they'll say it's proof of instability. Two. Do not drink another drop of anything Lorraine hands you. Three. Do not record any conversation you are not part of. Ohio is a one-party consent state, but that only protects you when you're in the conversation. Secret audio in your own house is a trap."
"What about video?"
She considered. "Video only, no sound, in a common area like the kitchen. Your own home. No bedrooms, no bathrooms. That's legal. It's also going to be your best evidence."
I nodded.
"Four. Document everything. Five. Trust nobody in that house. And six." She looked at me very steadily. "You need a word."
"A word?"
"If you're ever in danger, you text it to Ray. Something no one would ever say by accident."
"Pineapple," I said.
For the first time that week, Tamika almost smiled. "Pineapple it is."
On Friday morning, I sat in Dr. Helen Park's exam room in a paper gown, telling my primary care doctor of nine years that I thought I'd been drugged.
She's a small, fierce woman with silver-streaked braids and no patience for nonsense. She listened. She asked questions. She looked at my pupils and checked my reflexes. When I showed her the pharmacy label, her face went hard.
"You've never seen this Dr. Voss?"
"Never."