A place in this world - peace series spin off - ellianas story

back in time - part 3

**monday august 6th – 2040** 4-week-old **

-ellies pov-

The last thing on my testimony is when the judge asks me if I want to say anything to Adam and I did, I said that I didn't want to see him again. That's when the video ends and I wipe away the stream of tears sliding down my face.

Looking back at that I feel disgusted and lost. It was years ago but feels like it was yesterday. Hearing his voice again brought the scars to the surface and they burn underneath my skin. Now that I'm a parent I can't imagine what It would be like if it was Emilia going through something like that, I don't think any parent can imagine what it was like. But now I do understand why my mom didn't let me into the other room, I wouldn't have let Emilia either. I would have done anything to keep the pain away from her, that's what moms do.

After looking at it I throw away the vomit and go back to reading the documents. there are transcripts of everything that went on in the courtroom but not from the case itself with the investigation and all that, that stuff is still sealed. But there are pictures here, pictures of the room that I've actually not seen.

I'm hesitant to look at them, but I figure that I'm already reading so I might as well look at the pictures too. The basement is smaller than I remember, but that's probably because I was six years old at the time, so a room was obviously bigger to me back then, then it's to me now. The mattress is against the wall where the staircase isn't. You can see that there is a hole in the mattress that I don't remember. The floor looks dirty, just like I remember, and the staircase doesn't look safe to walk up and down, it looks like it could collapse.

Then there are pictures of the other room, and I've never actually seen what it looked like in there. There is an actual bed, but it's a single bed without sheets, only a mattress on top of the wooden frame. Other than that, it's nothing in the room, its completely bare.

Reading my mom talking about what he did to her send's shivers all over my body and I want to throw up again. It does sort of feel like a violation of her privacy to read her explaining the details of what happened to her, but its stuff that I don't think she would have told me herself. Some things are just too hard to speak about, and I get that. At times I was so mad that she didn't answer my questions, but now I can sort of see why, there are no words for what he did to her. How she is doing as well as she is after this amaze me.

"Hey baby I'm back" Alex says as he comes into the office, and I quickly pull up another page to cover what I'm doing. "Why did you click away?" he asks and furrow his eyebrows.

"Nothing. I was just preparing for class" I lie. It's a month until school starts and there is nothing to prepare for, he knows that too as he was just picking up our books for the coming semester.

"Nice try. What's going on? Tell me" he says and sit down on the other chair. "Fine... you can't tell a soul. I mean it Alex" I say and feel the bile coming up again and giving me a horrible taste in my mouth.

"Adam called me, and I picked up" I tell him, and his eyes widen. "He did what? And why the hell did you pick up?" he says and run his fingers through his soft brown hair. I've talked with Alex about some of the things that happened, and he obviously picked up on things over the years, but other than that Adam isn't something I talk about. The only people I talk with about that stuff is my mom or my therapist. My mom because she was there with me, so she gets it, and my therapist because she is paid to listen to me whine and keep her mouth shut.

"I just did. And then I looked at old court documents and such. It's no big deal, I'm just... processing" I argue. Curiosity sparked my interest, and now I want to know anything I could possibly learn about it.