“That isn’t what I thought.”
“I know that now.”
He folded his hands.
“When Melissa came back, suddenly there were specialists and legal consultations and things insurance wouldn’t cover. I told myself you’d want the money used for her.”
“You were probably right.”
“That didn’t make it mine to decide.”
There was nothing left for me to argue with.
So I said what mattered.
“From now on, we decide together.”
Calvin nodded.
“From now on.”
The next morning we contacted the county records office.
By the end of the week, an investigator named Lena Ortiz had reopened the old identification file.
She did not make excuses.
“The procedures used seven years ago were insufficient,” she told us. “There were assumptions that should have been tested.”
The woman whose remains we had received had been traveling with Melissa.
Her name was likely Nora Vance, a coworker from the accounting office where Melissa worked.
