“I have another appointment.”

He went without telling me what he knew.

I reported the exchange to Sophia as accurately as I could, including the possibility that he had only learned about the dispute recently.

I did not want suspicion to become a substitute for evidence.

My family was already treating an assumption as permission.

I wasn’t going to follow their example.

The vendor records began arriving through counsel and the authorized review.

They showed a six-thousand-dollar first payment toward the twenty-thousand-dollar floral package, dated two days after closing.