At 3 A.M., My Brother Dragged Me Out of My Bedroom While Dad Laughed—He Had No Idea What the Smoke Detector Had Recorded

“I found it in an envelope.”

I stared.

She’d mentioned it before.

But now there it was.

The visible mark.

The date that could be narrowed through family photographs.

A record that supported her memory of what she’d seen.

Not proof of exactly how the mark occurred.