Three weeks after the funeral, I was still sitting on Brooke's floor surrounded by boxes I couldn't make myself close.

The apartment smelled like her. Lemon dish soap and the vanilla candle she never blew out all the way. I kept catching myself listening for her key in the door, for the thump of her bag hitting the console table. Then I'd remember. Then the room would go a little darker, even with the lamps on.

Her green grading pen was on the coffee table where she'd left it. I hadn't touched it. I couldn't.

The door opened without a knock. Leonel had a key now — he'd gotten one made the week after the funeral, said it was easier than making me buzz him in every time. He came in with a paper bag of takeout in one arm and a bunch of white ranunculus in the other, the kind Brooke used to keep on her kitchen windowsill.

"Hey." His voice went soft the second he saw me on the floor. "You haven't eaten, have you."

It wasn't really a question. He set the flowers in the empty vase by the sink like he'd done it a hundred times, like this was his apartment too. Maybe it felt that way to him. It didn't to me. Nothing in this room felt like it belonged to anyone but Brooke, even empty.

My phone buzzed against the floorboards. I looked at the screen — a number from the school district, HR extension. My stomach dropped the way it did every time now, half hope, half dread.

Leonel's hand came down over mine before I could pick it up.

"Don't," he said gently. "Let it go to voicemail."

"It might be about the review. They said they'd call when—"

"Naomi." He crouched down in front of me, took both my hands like he was cupping something fragile. "Let the system handle it. That's what it's there for. You need to rest. You've barely slept."

The phone kept buzzing. Four rings. Five. I watched it die on the floor between us, and something in me — some small, stubborn thread — wanted to pick it back up anyway. But his thumb was moving slow circles over my knuckles, and his eyes had that warm, steady look that always made the noise in my head go quiet, and I let the thread go slack.

"Okay," I said.

He kissed my forehead like I'd passed a test. "That's my girl."

We ate on the floor because I didn't have the energy to move to the table. He talked about small things — a fundraiser gala coming up, some board member he had to charm — and I let his voice fill the apartment instead of the silence. It was easier that way. He was always easier.

Later, after he fell asleep on Brooke's couch with the TV murmuring low, I went back to the closet. There was one storage box left, shoved in the back corner, the cardboard soft with age. I told myself I'd just check it and stop for the night.

Inside were photo albums from Brooke's college years, before I was even old enough to remember much of anything. I flipped through them slow, smiling at her terrible haircut, at a Halloween costume that made no sense, at a version of my sister who looked young and unburdened in a way I never really knew.

Then I found the loose photo, tucked between two pages like a bookmark someone forgot.

An alumni event. A ballroom, string lights, everyone dressed up. And there, laughing with his head tipped toward a woman's ear, was Leonel.

He looked younger. Looser. His arm was wrapped around her waist in a way that wasn't casual, wasn't just-friends. She was laughing too, her hand flat against his chest like she'd done it a thousand times before.

I turned the photo over. Someone had written a name on the back in faded pencil.

*Tatum.*

The name landed somewhere behind my ribs before my brain caught up with why.

Tatum Bell. My sister's department chair. The woman Brooke had mentioned maybe three or four times, always with a tired little laugh — *Tatum wants another demo class, Tatum thinks I have infinite hours in a day.* Never a first name I connected to a face. Never anyone I thought mattered enough to remember.

I sat very still on the closet floor, the photo trembling slightly in my hand.

Leonel had never once said her name. Not when Brooke was alive and complaining about her schedule. Not at the funeral, when half of Brooke's coworkers filed past to shake his hand. Not in any of the late-night conversations where he swore, over and over, that he'd help me get answers, help me understand what really happened to my sister.

He knew her. He'd known her for years, maybe longer than he'd known me.

And he had never said a word.

The TV still murmured from the living room. I could hear him breathing evenly, asleep, at peace, on my dead sister's couch.

I put the photo in my pocket and didn't tell him I'd found it.

I waited until Leonel left for the night before I called him.

That sounds strange, I know. But I needed the distance of a phone line between us. I needed to not see his face while I asked.

I sat on Brooke's floor with the photo in my lap, running my thumb over the faded pencil on the back. *Tatum.* I'd looked at it so many times the edges had gone soft.

He picked up on the second ring. "Hey, you okay? You should be asleep."

"I will be." I kept my voice light. Easy. The voice I always used with him. "Random question. Do you know anyone named Tatum Bell?"

There was a pause.

Not a long one. Maybe two seconds. But I'd spent three years learning the rhythm of his voice, the way he answered things he cared about fast and things he didn't care about even faster. This was neither. This was a pause where something recalculated.

"Doesn't ring a bell," he said. "Why?"

"No reason. Saw the name somewhere." I pressed my palm flat over the photograph like I could keep it from moving. "Never mind. Goodnight."

"Naomi—"

"I'm tired," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

I hung up before he could say anything else. Before the warmth in his voice could reach through the phone and talk me out of what I already knew.

He'd lied. Clean and easy, like it cost him nothing.

I called Wren next. She answered on the first ring, because Wren always answered on the first ring, day or night, like she was perpetually braced for bad news.

"Hey. It's late. What's wrong?"

I told her everything. The photo. The ballroom. His arm around a woman's waist like he'd done it a thousand times. The name on the back. The two-second pause on the phone just now, and the easy, flat lie that came after it.

Wren didn't say anything for a second. I could hear her moving around, a drawer sliding open, papers shifting.

"Say the name again," she said.

"Tatum Bell. She's Brooke's department chair."

Another pause, shorter this time, more like she was writing it down than processing it.

"Naomi." Her voice had changed. Flatter. More careful. "Don't tell him we talked. I'm going to look into some things."

"Wren, what—"

"Just don't tell him." A beat. "Please."

I didn't ask again. That wasn't like Wren, to ask twice for anything, let alone please. So I just said okay, and we hung up, and I sat there in Brooke's apartment a long time, listening to the vanilla candle hiss where it had burned down to nothing.

—

The next morning I went to Leonel's penthouse like nothing had happened.

I don't know if that makes me weak or just smart. Probably both. I let him open the door in his socks, let him kiss the top of my head, let the smell of his coffee — dark roast, too strong, the way I used to think was charming — pull me into the kitchen.

"I got you the croissants from that place you like," he said, sliding a plate across the island. "The ones with the almond filling."

"Thank you." I took one. I even smiled. It wasn't hard. I'd had a lot of practice smiling through things lately.

He reached across the counter and took my hand, turning it over like he was checking for something. "You look tired."

"I didn't sleep much."

"You should let me take you somewhere this weekend. Somewhere quiet. You need to breathe." His thumb moved over my knuckles, slow, familiar. Once, that gesture would have loosened something in my chest. Now I just watched his hand instead of feeling it.

"Maybe," I said. Then, casual, like it was nothing, like I was just making conversation over croissants: "The district finally called back about the review. They want to schedule a meeting next week."

His hand went still on mine.

Then, without seeming to notice he was doing it, his other hand drifted up to his wrist. To the watch. His grandfather's watch, the one he never took off, gold and heavy and scratched along one edge from years of wear. His fingers touched the face of it, just for a second. Just a small, absent brush of his thumb against the glass.

I'd seen him do it a hundred times before and never thought anything of it. A habit. A tic. The kind of thing you don't notice about someone until you're looking for reasons not to trust them.

"That's good," he said, and his voice was warm and even, the voice that used to make the noise in my head go quiet. "I'll come with you. We'll figure it out together."

"Okay." I took a bite of the croissant. It tasted like nothing.

He kept talking — about the meeting, about lawyers, about how he'd handle it, how I didn't need to worry, how he'd take care of everything the way he always did. I nodded in the right places. I let him hold my hand across the counter.

But for the first time since Brooke died, I wasn't leaning into him.

I was watching him. Filing away the pause on the phone, the flat lie, the way his thumb found that watch the second the word *review* left my mouth.

And some small, cold part of me — a part that used to be soft, that used to need him to be good — started keeping a list of its own.

Wren started building the file three days after I showed her the photo.

She didn't tell me that's what she was doing. Not at first. She just stopped answering my calls during work hours and started texting back at midnight with things like *still looking* or *found something, need to confirm*. I knew better than to push. When Wren went quiet, it meant she was hunting.

I found out later she was spending every lunch break and stolen half-hour in county records offices, pulling donation filings and corporate disclosures, building a physical case file she refused to keep on her laptop. She told me once, months afterward, that she color-coded everything — green for financial records, yellow for university documents, red for anything that connected the two. She said paper couldn't be hacked. Only stolen. And she dared anyone to try.

It took her four days to find the building.

Four point two million dollars. Donated to the university eleven days after Brooke died. The timing wasn't just close. It was surgical.

She didn't call me when she found it. She sat in her car outside the courthouse archives and stared at the filing for twenty minutes, she told me later, because she'd been hoping — really hoping — that I was wrong about him.

But I wasn't.

—

Leonel took me to dinner that Friday. Somewhere quiet, he said. Somewhere we could talk.

It was one of those places where they don't give you a menu, just bring you whatever the chef decides you should eat. Soft lighting. Candles in hurricane glass. The kind of restaurant where everyone speaks in low voices like they're at a funeral.

He ordered wine. Something French. Something I didn't ask the name of because I wasn't really tasting it anyway.

"You've been so tense lately," he said, reaching across the table to take my hand. His thumb settled over my knuckles, warm and steady. "I'm worried about you."

"I'm fine."

"You're not sleeping. You're not eating." He tilted his head, gave me that look — the one that used to make me feel seen, understood, held. "Have you thought about talking to someone? A grief counselor, maybe. Someone who specializes in this kind of loss."

I looked at our hands. His fingers were laced through mine like we were praying together.

"I don't need a counselor," I said. "I need answers."

He sighed. Not impatient. Just... sad. Like I was a child insisting the monster under the bed was real.

"Naomi." He squeezed my hand. "Sometimes terrible things just happen. And there's no one to blame. Brooke worked hard because she loved her students. That's who she was. But that doesn't mean someone killed her."

His other hand drifted to his wrist. To the watch. Just for a second. Just a light, absent touch, his thumb brushing the glass.

I watched him do it and felt something cold settle behind my ribs.

"I keep thinking about her schedule," I said quietly. "All those demonstration classes. Forty-seven in one semester. That's not normal, is it?"

"I don't know what's normal for teachers." His voice stayed gentle. Soothing. "But I know Brooke would want you to take care of yourself. Not tear yourself apart looking for someone to punish."

He lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles, right there across the table, and smiled at me like I was something fragile he was trying very hard not to break.

I smiled back. I even leaned into it a little, let my shoulder relax, let him think it was working.

But I was adding it to the list. The one I'd started keeping in my head. The watch. The pause on the phone. The lie about Tatum's name. And now this — the soft, reasonable suggestion that maybe my sister's death was just bad luck, and I should stop asking why.

—

Two days later, I called Leonel's office.

His assistant picked up on the second ring, bright and professional. "Mr. Wright's office, this is Stephanie."

"Hi, Stephanie. It's Naomi Peterson." I kept my voice light. Easy. The girlfriend calling about something small. "I'm so sorry to bother you. Leonel mentioned he was holding onto some of my sister's teaching materials — curriculum binders, lesson plans, that kind of thing. I'd like to pick them up this week if that's okay."

There was a pause. Not long. Just the sound of keys clicking, a database being searched.

"I'm not seeing anything like that in our storage logs," Stephanie said slowly. "Let me double-check."

More clicking. A longer pause.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Peterson. There's nothing under your sister's name in our system. But there is a note here that some educational materials were forwarded to another party a few weeks ago, on Mr. Wright's personal instruction. It doesn't say who."

I closed my eyes.

"Okay," I said. "Thank you, Stephanie."

"Of course. I can ask Mr. Wright if you'd like—"

"No. That's okay. I'll ask him myself."

I hung up. Set the phone down on the kitchen counter. Sat very still.

Brooke's lesson plans. The ones she'd spent years refining. The ones she'd annotated in green ink with notes about which students needed extra encouragement, which units worked best in winter, which texts made kids who hated reading actually care.

Forwarded to another party.

I didn't need Wren to tell me who.