For a long moment, he didn’t respond.

Then, in a voice stripped of its old confidence, he said, “I was so certain you were trying to trap me.”

“Certainty isn’t evidence, Tristan.”

He nodded as though repeating the phrase to himself.

I thought we had reached the difficult part of the conversation.

I didn’t yet realize that a single letter, stored in an old family filing cabinet, would make the night harder still.

PART 7