PART 2

The folder was plain, and thick enough to make my father’s eyes flicker.

My mother noticed. “What is that?”

“Something Ethan started.”

Julian snorted. “Your dead husband left homework?”

My hand tightened on the cover, but my voice stayed level. “Yes.”

Ethan had been a corporate insurance attorney. Careful, methodical, impossible to intimidate.

Six months before the crash, a loan rejection letter arrived at our house—for a loan I had never applied for. I still remember his face at the kitchen table that night.