You Know Why

Part 1 - Chapters 1 to 2

Snow falls fast over the eaves of a charming cottage, icicles forming along the roofline, while a radiant Christmas evening plays out inside. The Norway spruce sparkles with silver and gold, a fire warms the space by the mantel, wrapping paper, ribbons, and tape wait on the table, and the Vince Guaraldi Trio sends A Charlie Brown Christmas through the in-house speakers from a phone. That soundtrack was always her favorite, a childhood holdover that growing up never stripped away. Soup bubbles on the stove. A pie in the oven turns browner and browner until it blackens, its burnt sugar smelling like molasses as smoke drifts from the vents. The playlist resets and the music spills through the scene again, holly, jolly, holly, jolly, again and again.

The smoke sets off the fire alarm, its shriek cutting through the warmth. The tiny baby in her belly shifts toward heaven. A quick, ordinary thought follows: he might have been fond of jazz too, and they would have had to talk about that, because a little jazz goes a long way. On the floor, the scissors lie open, blades stained poppy, crimson, maroon, rosewood, sticky and viscous. The rest of the blood spreads, and spreads.

The aftermath

The screams when she is found reverberate and keep coming. Phone calls, lights, sirens, uniforms, shaking heads. What a pity. What a shame. Media trucks line the blocks for months. And then there is him. Guilty? Innocent? Did he have a hand in this? He was not there. He was on a business trip, on his way back, on a plane at the time of death, with witnesses. There is no way he could have done it. Yet the suspicion sharpens: he did it, they just can't prove it. Her blood sits in all the wrong places. Evidence mounts, public attention builds to a fever pitch, and the conclusion firms: a mastermind, a monster. It can be no other way. He killed her. He killed them all, his own family, his people.

Negotiations follow, with talk of plea deals, surrender, rumors. A grand jury decides it will not happen. Not enough evidence. He is free to go. Bail is offered. And then he runs, disappears, poof. Impossible, they say. He will be found. You are safe. You are all safe. But the dread underneath the reassurance refuses to leave: desperate men do desperate things. They look everywhere and come up with nothing, egg on their faces. Time passes, days, weeks, months, years. No sign of him. She is still dead. They are still dead. The beautiful wife and the promise of that darling infant sink into burial and then into forgetting, shouldered aside by the next big case, the next splashy story.

Eden

A new voice breaks in: "Hi. Hello. It's nice to meet you. My name is Eden." She is here to say that eleven years ago, on Christmas Eve at approximately 7:04 in the evening, her younger sister Chloe was murdered. Justice was not served. The killer walked free. Eden warns that evil walks among her listeners; it could be a next-door neighbor, an ex, a spouse raising and loving children. Nobody knows the people around them as well as they think. Everyone keeps secrets, hides their true selves. Evil moves through a world of cat pictures, garden shots, and selfies, trails people through grocery stores, serves them drinks, follows them home. It pretends to be normal. Once evil steps into the light, it loses its power, and only then does it strike. Evil visited her sister, Eden says, took Chloe's life as carelessly as breathing, and got away with it. For now. She is going to make that right. Just watch.

Part 2 - Chapters 3 to 9

Part 2 - Chapters 3 to 9

At 6:40 in the morning on December 11 in Nashville, Brooklyn Locke wakes to the sound of her children giggling and sunlight streaming through the blackout curtains. Her husband, Trey, hates alarms—they remind him too much of sirens—so the family relies on sunlight and their two children to rouse him. Andrew Edward Locke IV, called Four, is nine and looks like his father with dark hair and whiskey-brown eyes. His sister Neve, seven, takes after Brooklyn with sunny-blond curls. The dog, a cocker spaniel named Bohdi, joins the morning ritual as the children fling open the curtains and jump on the bed. It is, by all accounts, a perfect morning. Ten years of marriage, two beautiful children, a quiet home in a calm suburb.

The kids are excited because their aunt Margot, Brooklyn's twin sister, is coming to stay with the dog while the family heads to the airport. They are going on a true family vacation, which strikes Brooklyn as deeply out of character. Trey hates vacations and hates to travel even more. He works from home, keeps his world small and safe. Which is exactly why, the previous day, Brooklyn was shocked when he appeared at her office door, grinning ear to ear.

Trey interrupts her work on an article for the gluten-free food magazine she writes for. He announces he has a surprise. Brooklyn mentions that Sherry from the magazine called about a potential TV show featuring her recipes—Baking with Brooklyn. The mention of the famous chef Roger Bandolier casts a shadow over Brooklyn; she is thrust back in time to France, to his untimely death, and she mentally begs him to rest in peace. She admits she isn't sure she wants the scrutiny television would bring.

Then Trey delivers his own surprise. He is taking her and the kids to Italy for the holidays. Three weeks. Milan, Venice, Rome, Florence, Tuscany, Verona. Brooklyn, convinced he is joking, spins in her chair guessing absurd presents. But Trey is serious. The reservations are made. Bob Gussin, Brooklyn's uncle and Trey's boss at the investment firm Gussin Group, has a conflict and is handing Trey a major account at an economic conference in Milan. It is a big deal.

Brooklyn objects on logistics: the tickets will be outrageous, pulling the kids out of school is disruptive, Neve has her cameo in The Nutcracker, and she has a deadline. Trey counters every point. The trip is on Bob and Pat's dime. The passport problem—Trey's is expired—is solved because Pat knows a guy who can expedite it overnight. And once the deal goes through, Trey tells her, she will never have to work again. She insists he is not going to Italy alone, and Trey's face splits into a happy smile. She points out the most obvious flaw: he hates to fly. "Sometimes we all need to make sacrifices," he says.

That night, after the kids are in bed and Trey is snoring, Brooklyn finishes the trip preparations. She reflects on who she used to be: not a staid, steady food blogger and suburban mother, but one of the most sought-after travel food photographers in the industry. She worked as staff photographer on Roger Bandolier's international cooking show, traveling the world for two years. Before Roger, there is a version of Brooklyn that was free, fearless, opinionated. After Roger, everything changed. His death ended the show, ended her relationship with Alex, her ex of all exes, and drove her toward family and stability. And then, soon after, she met a whiskey-eyed man under a starlit sky in San Miguel de Allende. She loved him immediately and happily married him a few weeks later.

She thinks about the ghosts of her past—Roger and Alex—and wills them away. Roger died of a drug overdose, cocaine laced with fentanyl, after a raging night of partying. They had fought that afternoon. A life unfinished. Brooklyn continues her tasks, dealing with leftover open bottles of wine, wiping down counters, folding laundry. It is nearly two in the morning, and she is too jazzed to sleep.

She lets Bohdi out into the fenced backyard. The night is deep and dark. Bohdi freezes, on alert, his whole body shivering. There is crackling in the winter forest, an animal stepping closer. Brooklyn shifts, and it stops. She can feel it staring. The moment stretches, unsettling, until the beast crashes away. Brooklyn is left with a strange premonition she cannot dispel.

She calls Bohdi inside and opens her laptop to set away messages. In her personal inbox, there is a new message from an unknown address with a blank header. She assumes it is spam. But something compels her to open it. It contains two sentences that make every hair on her body rise in fright: "We know what you did. Get us the money, or we will end this."

And then, as she stares at it, the message disappears.

The threatening email disappears without a trace. Brooklyn searches her inbox, her trash, her other accounts. Nothing. She can't even recall the sender's address. Maybe someone unsent it. Maybe it was never meant for her. Maybe she dreamed it in her exhaustion. She pinches herself to make sure she's awake, and it hurts. The message is simply gone. Sleep won't come to her for a long time.

December 12: La Dolce Vita

The morning is a chaotic scramble. After feeding and watering, shoving last-minute Christmas presents into bags, and wrangling the whole family into the car, Brooklyn has no chance to tell Trey about the vanished email. If he weren't stepping in for Bob at this finance conference, she never would have agreed to such a rushed trip. But she can't deny him the opportunity. By the time they reach the airport, she is running on almost no sleep.

Their self check-in fails. The screen says they need to see an agent. The flight board is already flashing "Boarding." Trey mutters the phrase she dreads: "Babe, I think something's wrong." Brooklyn hands him her carry-on and joins the economy plus line, where she overhears another traveler explaining that a flight was just canceled because of a mechanical issue. She decides not to mention that to Trey.

At 11:11, Brooklyn notices the clock and takes it as an angel sign. She believes someone is watching over them, saving them from hidden disasters. Maybe this delay is protection. Maybe that threatening email was just a mistake. In the daylight, it almost seems humorous. She still plans to tell Trey, but only once the kids are asleep.

At 11:13, the attendant calls her up. The news is a cascade of reversals. First, the Nashville-to-London leg has been bumped. But the agent works magic: they are rebooked through Atlanta in comfort plus, then overnight to Milan in the airline's new first-class pods. They will arrive three hours earlier. The upgrade costs nothing. The only catch is that the Atlanta flight leaves in forty-five minutes.

Brooklyn waves Trey over, tells the kids to run, and somehow they make it. They burst through security and sprint to the gate as the final call rings out.

Trey stops short when he sees the city name above the gate: Atlanta. He doesn't want to fly through Atlanta. He wanted London. Brooklyn explains they don't have a choice and that the first-class pods are a gift, but Trey's whole body has gone stiff. The easygoing husband from the past few hours is gone. He grabs her arm just a little too roughly and hisses, "Did you do this, Brooklyn? Did you call ahead and change the flights?" She denies it and tries to laugh it off, but Trey is deadly serious. She offers to push the entire trip back. Trey shakes his head, jaw tight. He has to be at the conference. Finally, he takes the boarding passes, shoots her a dagger of a look, and stalks onto the jet bridge without waiting for her or the kids.

Don't I Know You?

On the plane, they are the last to board, and everyone watches. Trey is pale, quiet, furious. Brooklyn reaches across the aisle to pat his hand and tells him it will be fine. Trey asks what happened to the other flight. She says it was probably a routine bump from overselling, but Trey doesn't buy it. He closes his eyes and bites the inside of his cheek, a sure sign of anger. She offers an Ativan. He snaps at her to stop nagging.

The pilot warns of choppy air. Storms. Trey groans audibly, and their son Four mimics him. Brooklyn hands over the iPad and headphones, desperate to distract them. Trey ignores the device and grips the armrest with one hand and Four with the other. Neve, their sensitive daughter, asks softly, "Mommy, are we okay?" Brooklyn tells her they're just going through potholes in the sky and paints a picture of the Vatican covered in Christmas lights. Neve immediately begins chattering about her choreography, and Brooklyn holds on to that bright image as the plane jolts and shudders.

The flight to Atlanta is mercifully short, under thirty minutes. The whole cabin applauds when the wheels touch down. As they taxi to the gate, Brooklyn begins gathering their belongings. She is bent over picking up scattered crackers when a woman

Part 3 - Chapters 10 to 14

Brooklyn Locke races through Hartsfield-Jackson with her kids, Four and Neve, and just barely makes the connection to the Milan flight. She loves the international terminal—the mix of cultures, the sense of adventure. When they reach the gate, boarding hasn’t started. There’s time for a bathroom break. The kids don’t need one. But Trey is staring past Brooklyn at the passengers, shoulders tight, looking like he’s about to explode. She asks if he’s okay, and he snaps at her for nagging.

Brooklyn bites her tongue. She’s still rattled by the morning, by the rush Trey created when he sprang the Italy trip on her yesterday, and by his sharp temper since. She’s glad she hasn’t mentioned the email. He won’t take that well at all.

Then Trey touches her shoulder and changes his mind. He does need the restroom. She hands him his passport. He kisses her forehead, cups her chin, and gives her a quiet look that feels like an apology. The aggression is gone. Her soft, sweet husband is back. He says he’ll be back in a minute and that he’ll tell her everything later. Brooklyn relaxes for the first time in hours.

Neve pulls her attention to the window, and when Brooklyn looks back, Trey is gone. The flight opens for boarding. She texts him. Minutes pass. She texts again. Finally, his reply comes: “Get on the plane. Remember what I told you. Anything. I love you.” Brooklyn steels herself and tells the kids Daddy will meet them on board.

Inside the first-class cabin, she settles the children into their pods and accepts a glass of champagne. For a moment, it feels like everything will be okay. But as boarding finishes, Trey still hasn’t appeared. Brooklyn calls and texts, over and over, reaching only voicemail. The flight attendant tells her the doors are closing. Brooklyn insists she cannot leave without her husband. The kids start crying. She stands up, pulls down the backpacks, and tells her children they have to go find Daddy. She tells the crew she will not fly her kids overnight to another country without their father.

Getting off the plane takes divine intervention. After arguing with flight attendants, pilots, and gate agents, Brooklyn and the children are finally allowed to disembark. Waiting for them are airport police, TSA agents, and an airline representative, all stern-faced. Brooklyn asks to get the kids situated, wipes Neve’s nose, tells Four he is in charge of his sister, and leaves them with a kindly gate agent.

The questioning begins. Did she see Trey enter the bathroom? No. He walked back toward the escalators. Officer West starts firing questions: Are they having trouble? Is he leaving the marriage? Does he have mental disorders? Weapons? Another woman? Money problems? Is there any chance he will hurt himself or someone else? Brooklyn answers no to all of it. She is increasingly terrified. The officer who checks the bathroom returns and shakes his head. Trey is not there.

Brooklyn cannot make sense of it. Her mind jumps from illness to kidnapping to murder. Tears start to come. She tells West he is scaring her. West keeps pressing, especially about whether Trey is a security risk. Overhead, a page repeats: “Mr. Locke. Mr. Andrew Locke. Please come to gate E7.” No one answers. Brooklyn explains they were not even supposed to be on this flight—their original Nashville-to-Milan route through London was canceled, and they were rebooked onto this one. It is a fluke that they are here at all.

The airline reacts hard. The flight is pulled. Passengers pour back into the terminal, and the plane is taken out of service for baggage rescreening and a full security sweep. A K-9 unit moves through the crowd. People film everything. Chief Matheson, the federal security director, appears in a gray suit and suggests moving to a quieter place. First-class passengers make their derision plain. Brooklyn has ruined their trip.

Matheson tells her she needs to come with him. Brooklyn gathers the children and thanks the gate agent, and that is when Eden Barrow appears. Eden is the woman from the plane. She says she works for the airline, noticed the commotion, and wants to help. She apologizes, explains that she recognized Andrew immediately—those eyes are unmistakable—though she does not think he recognized her. Brooklyn corrects her: Trey. His name is Trey.

Brooklyn has a chill about Eden. Trey had already told her he did not know Eden Barrow, that the woman was creepy. But the children only heard the high school comment. Eden seems safe enough to sit with them while Brooklyn is questioned. Brooklyn makes a snap decision and agrees. As they march past the gawkers, Brooklyn thinks that if this ends up all over social media, maybe Trey will see it and come back.

Eden Barrow sits down to play Go Fish with Four and Neve. Babysitting was not on her bingo card for the day, but she is happy to do it. It gives her time to think, to assess, to plan. In her mind, this is destiny.

She looks at Andrew’s children and sees him in their faces. The sight makes her want to collapse. She forces herself not to go back to that Christmas Eve, but the memory is already there: her sister Chloe’s house, decorated for Christmas, the alarm blaring, Andrew on his knees covered in Chloe’s blood, the scissors on the floor with blood dripping from their blades. Eden had come to deliver presents because their mother was ill. She walked in on the aftermath of murder. Chloe is dead. Andrew got away with it.

Eden does not believe she is helping Brooklyn out of kindness. For her, this is survival. Andrew killed Chloe when she challenged him. Given the chance, Eden believes he will eventually kill Brooklyn too. Now that Andrew has seen Eden’s face and knows she has found him, he may come after her as well. And the children, living reminders of what might have been, must be in danger too. Eden wants to keep them safe. She repeats it to herself: she has to keep them safe.

Numbers calm her. Numbers do not lie. She thinks in probabilities, the way she does in her career forecasting travel budgets. She runs the odds of finding the man who murdered her sister: on any given year, roughly 1 in 121, about 0.826 percent, and over a decade, maybe 8.26 percent. Not zero. She has spent eleven years looking for Andrew Locke in airports, stores, bars, restaurants, concert crowds, even driving past his parents’ house. She took the airline job, she tells herself, not with this in mind. Not really. But she has never stopped searching.

She watches the children play and thinks about young families in general. Children seem drawn to her, like cats to the one person who does not want them. It reminds her of the witch in the fairy tales, who only wanted to be left alone and not reminded of what she did not have.

Eden replays the earlier flight from Nashville to Atlanta. She saw Brooklyn first: a well-groomed, suburban type, good with her kids, patient and warm. The family boarded late, harried. The husband started snapping at his wife. Eden was furious at him, at both of them, for having so much and still fighting in public. Then the husband spoke again in a low growl, and every hair on Eden’s body stood up. She knew that voice.

The memory hit her in sensory pieces: the smell of copper and evergreen candle, the sound of a record stuck in its loop, Chloe’s legs twitching as her cells died one by one. Eden craned to see the man’s face, but the angle was wrong. She got up during turbulence and walked toward the lavatory, then turned back, heart pounding, earning a scolding from a flight attendant. But she saw him. His face was older, his nose looked different, his hair was longer and darker, and he wore a beard. The eyes were unmistakable. It was Andrew Locke, her sister’s murderer, sitting with a new wife and new children.

When the flight landed and the family stood to leave, Eden stood up too. The right moment was slipping away in the enormous Atlanta airport. She could easily lose him. There were ways to stop him, but Eden did not want to simply stop him. She wanted a confrontation. She believes she has earned it. So she follows.

The plane lands in Atlanta, and the woman who has waited for this moment rises with everyone else. When she calls out the name she knows him by, the man she recognizes as Andrew turns sharply. He recognizes her, and a thrill runs all the way through her. She has dreamed of meeting him face-to-face again. Part of her wants to start screaming “Murderer!” at the top of her lungs, but she knows that would make her look like the crazy one. Instead, she reaches for the simplest connection, one that will let him know she has found him at last, and threaten him the most: Hi, remember me. Remember Chloe? Their sweet, darling, dead, murdered Chloe.

Her mind runs over the years she has spent imagining this reckoning. She wonders if Andrew ever thinks about Chloe at all, or if the loss of a wife is just a dead pet to him. She remembers lighting candles on the anniversary of a

Part 4 - Chapters 15 to 20

Part 4 - Chapters 15 to 20

At the airport, Brooklyn Locke accepts there is still no news about her missing husband. Four and Neve are curled up on a couch with Eden Barrow, an airline employee who has been helping them. Brooklyn moves to take her children and leave for a hotel. Eden offers her home for the night. Brooklyn hesitates, explains she's practically a stranger, and introduces herself. Eden mentions she went to high school with Brooklyn's husband, Trey, though Trey wouldn't talk about it. Brooklyn deflects, saying he's not a great flier. Then Eden asks, almost knowingly, whether Trey has ever mentioned Chloe. He hasn't.

Eden gets intense. She says she thinks Trey's strange behavior is her fault, or really his fault, "a guilty conscience." Brooklyn tenses, feels the woman's physical closeness like a violation, and jerks away when Eden puts a hand on her shoulder. Eden apologizes and offers to call police contacts, saying her job is keeping people safe. Brooklyn is suddenly certain she is being watched and wants only to leave. Eden grabs Brooklyn's phone, smashes them together, and shares contact information before Brooklyn can stop her.

Four overhears and starts lobbying to go to Miss Eden's house for pizza and ice cream. Brooklyn refuses firmly; Four's lip wobbles, but a raised brow silences him. Eden walks them out, saying she's from Malogen, Georgia, not Connecticut. Brooklyn relaxes, thinking this confirms Trey doesn't know her, since Trey is from Hartford. But Eden insists the resemblance is uncanny, and she's certain the man Brooklyn married is the Andrew Locke she went to school with. Brooklyn's mind spins. Before she can probe further, her phone buzzes: Margot has booked a hotel downtown because nothing near the airport is available. Eden pushes her offer again. Brooklyn refuses, asks for time to process, and Eden flags down a cab. They drive away as Eden watches them thoughtfully.

In the cab, the children fall asleep. Brooklyn lets her brave face slip. She starts doubting her husband for the first time. She searches for "Andrew Locke Malogen Georgia" and finds nothing, then searches Hartford and finds only generic results. Trying Chloe Barrow, she finds an obituary: Chloe Elizabeth Barrow Locke, twenty-four, of Malogen, Georgia, beloved daughter, sister, and wife. Brooklyn realizes Eden's sister is dead, and her last name was Locke. She wonders if Trey could have been married to her. She dismisses it, then cannot dismiss it. The dread rises, along with fury. Trey's final text echoes in her mind: Get on the plane. Remember what I told you. She remembers that night in Argentina, when she was pregnant with Four and he told her fantastical things that never happened. She steadies herself with a to-do list: get the children safe, call the police, trace Trey's whereabouts, get into his phone, account for her own actions. She reviews the past weeks and finds nothing unusual, only the familiar tensions of holiday routine. She calls 911. The operator tells her she has to report the disappearance in Nashville, where she lives, not in Atlanta. Brooklyn hangs up and whispers to her sleeping children that everything will be okay, longing for someone to comfort her the way she comforts them.

From Eden's perspective, watching the cab pull away, she is shaking. Face to face with Andrew after all these years, hearing a strange threatening voice, then meeting his new family, has rocked her. She wishes she had told Brooklyn the truth about her husband, but she decides it's better that she didn't. Brooklyn trusts her now. Eden plans to use that trust. She feels protective of Brooklyn and the children, because they are in danger with a man she believes murdered her sister. Back in her car, Eden looks up Brooklyn's information. Everything is registered under Brooklyn's name, and there is almost nothing about Andrew anywhere online. She realizes he must have paid to scrub his name from the internet, exactly like the criminal she knows him to be. Then she looks at Brooklyn's social feeds and her Zillow listing, page after page of a beautiful life. Anger builds. Chloe should have been living in that house. Chloe should have had children. Chloe died pregnant, and Eden is resentful of kids she cannot help but compare to the life her sister lost. She recalls the murder scene she can never forget, the blood, her sister's death, and she tells herself that Andrew has to pay. She decides the path to retribution runs through his precious family, and she will be Brooklyn's friend, to keep her safe.

At the Marriott Marquis, the cabdriver has to announce their arrival. Brooklyn tries to pay with her card and it is declined. Her backup card is declined too, as is Apple Pay. She pays with an emergency hundred-dollar bill, leaves a sarcastic tip, and wakes the children. At the front desk, the reservation made by Margot is there, but the hotel needs a working card for incidentals. Brooklyn offers cash. The clerk says they need a card. Four wails for his daddy in the lobby. Brooklyn hugs him, hands snacks to both children, and calls the number on the credit card. After multiple security checks, she learns what happened: the account was frozen yesterday.

Brooklyn's calls to the airline yield nothing useful; she only grows more alarmed when she finds that her credit cards are being declined for nonpayment. When she reaches her Nashville bank, her agent, Leeann, is already upset, believing Brooklyn closed the account without giving her a chance to fight for the business. The paperwork was signed, Leeann insists, and it was brought in by Trey. He withdrew $100,000 in cash, wired out $147,000, and moved $53,000 into a Coinbase wallet. Worse, the account should have held close to $700,000, but steady withdrawals over six months have been draining it, down to about $300,000 before today's actions. Brooklyn is stunned; she signed everything Trey put in front of her for years, never challenging him. Leeann explains that the signature could be legitimate but that Brooklyn did not know what she was signing. She traces one of the SWIFT transfers to a numbered account at a Swiss bank in Zurich, an old account since those can no longer be opened, but the money is likely already moved. The crypto is traceable, though getting it back will require a forensic accountant, the wallet passcode, and access to the phone where the account lives. Brooklyn realizes the cryptic email from last night makes sense now, and she curses herself for not screenshotting it. She asks Leeann to wait one day before reporting anything, and Leeann agrees, for her. Brooklyn decides to return to Nashville.

Before she can call her uncle Bob, Margot calls. Brooklyn tells her the truth: Trey has emptied the accounts, the credit cards are dead, and she cannot get a hotel room. Margot is furious and wants to drive down to Atlanta, but Brooklyn weighs her options. She hates the idea of Margot on mountain roads after dark; more than that, Eden Barrow is her only lead on Trey's real past. She tells Margot she will take a cab to Eden's and they can drive back together in the morning. Margot is uneasy, warning that something feels very wrong. Brooklyn sends Eden a text, and Eden answers immediately, repeating her offer and adding that her detective friend can come by. Brooklyn texts Margot a pin drop for accountability, then fights the urge to text Trey. She opens the app that tracks him but decides not to delete it. She leaves one lifeline open and begs the ether: please reach out, please call and tell me what's happening. The kids are cheered by the prospect of pizza and ice cream as the cab heads back toward the airport.

DREAM A LITTLE DREAM

Eden sits in her empty house, alone on a couch that is still not broken in after years of travel. She is a road warrior who spends only a handful of days a month in Atlanta, and she prefers it that way, because staying still gives her too much time to search for Andrew and to dream of the day he reappears. She pictured that moment a hundred times, always with Andrew dying, but when she finally faced him today, she lost her composure and let him walk away. She slaps herself, again and again, calling herself weak and nothing and a loser until fury cuts through and she can think clearly.

Andrew disappeared ten years ago, the day the charges were dropped. Now she knows he calls himself Trey and has a new family. She pours a glass of wine, drinks half of it, and calls Detective Theresa Lee. Theresa answers with her usual exasperation; Eden has called many times over the years demanding updates on her sister's murder case. Eden tells her to sit down, that she found Andrew on her flight from Nashville with his wife and children. The detective goes quiet, breathing ragged. Eden savors the upper hand. She explains that Andrew, now "Trey," pretended not to know her and then ran, leaving his wife and kids behind at the airport. Eden might have been the one to call in the security threat, and she is not sorry. She tells Theresa that Trey's wife, Brooklyn, is a photographer with two nice children, that Trey has disappeared into Atlanta, and that she wants the file reopened. Theresa is stunned but asking questions.

Then a text appears on Eden's phone from Brooklyn Locke: Are you still up? Eden hangs up on Theresa and calls her