I looked down at my notebook, at the slanted line of my own handwriting.
Outside, dusk was starting to blue the windows. Somewhere in Manhattan, Nathan was probably lifting a wineglass and smiling like his life was perfectly arranged.
By the time Roz got to my house, I had found all thirty-two charges.
And by then, I wasn’t waiting for an explanation anymore.
I was following a trail.
Part 2
Roz arrived with two grocery bags, her keys between her fingers like claws and her ER badge still clipped to her scrubs. She kicked the door shut behind her with her heel and set the bags on the kitchen island like she was unloading emergency supplies.
“What’s in there?” I asked.
“Ice cream, chips, a legal pad, and sparkling water because you’re pregnant and I’m trying not to be trash.”
“Only trying?”
She gave me a look. “Don’t be cute. Have you touched any knives?”
Despite myself, I almost laughed. “No.”
“Good. We stay off true crime tonight.”
Roz and I looked enough alike that strangers always guessed sisters, but that was where the easy comparison ended. She was quick and loud where I was measured and quiet. She had shoulders like she was perpetually ready to carry bad news and a face that people trusted within about six seconds. She’d been an ER nurse for twelve years and spoke about chaos the way some people talk about weather. Calmly. With good shoes.
I laid out the statements, the calendar entries, the dates. I told her about the pattern. About the hotel. About the way it kept repeating until the repetition itself felt intimate.
Roz listened without interrupting, which was how I knew she understood the scale of it.
When I finished, she took the legal pad out of the grocery bag, clicked a pen open, and said, “Okay. Here’s what we’re not going to do. We’re not going to cry on his shoulder so he can control the narrative. We’re not going to warn him. We’re not going to give a man with expensive suits and a god complex time to move money.”
I stared at her.
She pushed the pen toward me. “You used to do this for a living.”
I looked down at the blank yellow page.
My stomach twisted. “This is different.”
“Sure. Because it’s your life. Which means you need to be colder, not softer.”
That hit me because it was true.