Somebody sent you that anonymous message, but we don’t know who or why.

Don’t let a stranger’s words become more powerful than documents we can actually examine.’

The reminder mattered.

I had nearly built an entire theory out of a grainy picture and a sentence from an unknown phone number.

I saved the message for Maren and stopped trying to solve it in the middle of the night.

Later, Beatrice sat beside me with an album of family pictures.

In one, my mother was laughing on the farmhouse porch, her hair windblown and her hand resting against a round belly.