Priya never told her what to feel. She asked what Morgan wanted to happen next, and then helped her separate the answer into manageable decisions. One decision was to keep the cottage. Another was to sleep somewhere safe. A third was to stop financing Julian’s speculative businesses. Morgan wrote those decisions in a notebook, each on its own line, and checked them when she doubted herself.
She also wrote down things she remembered without knowing whether they mattered: Julian asking which drawer held the deed, Celeste mentioning a buyer who preferred a fast closing, a call from an unknown lender, the day Julian took her spare house key to have a copy made. The investigator would decide what was relevant. Morgan’s job was to preserve what she knew rather than reshape it into a dramatic explanation.
That distinction mattered. It kept her from turning every coincidence into proof, and it kept Julian from persuading her that nothing counted unless she could explain every piece at once. The truth could arrive in fragments. She was allowed to protect herself while those fragments were being examined.
