After my husband died, his daughter climbed into my bed every night and asked, “Are you going to leave me too?” His family refused to take her, so I raised her alone for nine years.

The peace we had cultivated was violently interrupted on a Tuesday morning. I was at the Columbus center, sorting through mail in the administrative office, when a heavy, certified letter caught my eye. The return address belonged to a high-profile law firm in Chicago.

I opened it carefully, a familiar knot of dread tightening in my stomach. It was a formal legal notice regarding Victor.

Despite his exhausted appeals and his life sentence, Victor had managed to retain a new, aggressively ambitious defense attorney who was petitioning for a retrial based on alleged procedural errors during his original prosecution. The letter was a subpoena, demanding that both Lily and I appear for depositions to re-examine our testimonies.

Lily walked into the office just as I finished reading the document. She saw the blood drain from my face.

"What is it?" she asked, her protective instincts instantly flaring.

I handed her the letter silently. She read through the legal jargon, her expression hardening into absolute stone.

"He is trying to drag us back into court," I whispered, the trauma of the trial briefly flashing behind my eyes. "He wants to force you to sit in a room with his lawyers and relive the night your father died."

Lily didn't panic. She didn't cry. She simply picked up her phone and dialed Rebecca's number.

"Rebecca, Victor’s new lawyers just sent us a subpoena for a retrial deposition," Lily said, her voice remarkably calm and authoritative.

I listened to the faint, furious shouting coming from Rebecca on the other end of the line.

"I thought so," Lily nodded, a cold, predatory smile touching her lips. "I am not going back into that courtroom, Rebecca. I am not a terrified eleven-year-old girl anymore. File a motion to quash the subpoena immediately. Tell them if they attempt to harass my family again, I will personally fund a civil suit that will bankrupt his entire legal defense fund."