I went to the hallway closet, pulled my black hard-shell suitcase out from under the coat rack, and set it on the floor beside the bottom step of the staircase.

In the kitchen, I laid the large white envelope flat in the middle of the dark wooden table.

The three documents inside were lined up perfectly: Eleanor Bennett’s deed, the complete thirty-eight-thousand-dollar financial audit report from Frank Vance at Community First Bank, and Rebecca Sloan’s official divorce petition.

Beside the envelope, I set up my personal laptop and opened the cached folder on the desktop.

The screen showed the real estate worksheet for 412 Maple Drive in Golden, alongside the saved text threads between Daniel and Melissa.