He picked up his phone from the counter and walked toward the door.
At the threshold, he stopped.
“You have no idea what you’re doing,” he said.
Not to Ava.
To me.
“I think I do,” I said.
Officer Chen placed a hand on his arm and guided him forward.
The door closed.
Ava let out a breath that sounded like it had been held for five years.
She sat down on the kitchen floor, right where she’d been sitting the day before when she’d first told me the truth, and she covered her face with both hands and cried without making a sound.
I sat down beside her on the floor.
We stayed there for a long time.
Daniel was at the station for six hours.
His lawyer arrived within forty minutes.
Patricia called me at noon to say they were still in questioning and that Reyes had everything — the photograph, the note, Marcus’s written record, and Ava’s full formal statement, which she had given that morning before Reyes arrived.
