My husband pushed me down the stairs, and as I lay shattered at the bottom, my mother-in-law called my father and said, “Come get your worthless daughter and take her back.” Dad gave her only one warning: “If she has so much as a scratch, your family will answer for it.” They laughed at him because they had absolutely no idea who my father truly was.

Two days after Agnes’s interview, a plain envelope arrived at Gabriel’s office.

Inside was a copy of a service receipt from the Callahan security contractor.

It listed a replacement indoor camera installed near the upstairs hallway six weeks earlier.

There was no anonymous confession or dramatic note.

Just an invoice with a serial number.

Gabriel held it under his desk lamp.

“This doesn’t prove the recording exists or what it contains,” he said.

“But it gives us a precise system to ask about.”