It was a lie, in almost every particular that mattered.

The heater had not malfunctioned.

And what nobody outside our immediate family knew, what had been buried for twelve years under insurance settlements and careful silence and my own frightened complicity, was the actual reason that fire had started.

Samuel Ross had come to the party that night to help me finally tell it.

Chapter 7 — The Lawyer

Samuel set his briefcase on the table and removed a sealed evidence envelope.

“When I reopened my archived notes on this case,” he said, to the room as much as to me, “I found something that never appeared in the family’s official statement.”