He was declining to erase her from her own life.

Chapter 26 — Exactly Where I Left It

People might think I should have told them — the aunts, the cousins, the family group that passes news around.

Zoe thought so, for a night.

“But they should know what Aunt Monique did,” she said, at the desk, the blue folder between us.

Zoe wanted the family to know, that night, in the clean way children want justice to be visible — the wrong named out loud, the wrongdoer seen.

I understood the wish.