There is a lesson in that contrast that I have never forgotten: that the loudest cruelties are often answered not with loud justice but with quiet paperwork, and that the quiet kind is far more final.

Chloe tried to leave.

One of the investigators stopped her, politely.

“Ms.

Vance?

We’d like to speak with you as well.” Her face hardened into the expression I remembered from my kitchen five years earlier.

“This has nothing to do with me,” she said.

And I finally allowed myself a small smile.