At 2:17 in the morning, my mother looked straight at me through a hallway filling with smoke and said, “We can’t risk losing our daughter.”

I closed my eyes and went back into the hallway.

The roar of the fire downstairs. The thick, rolling gray cloud that tasted of melting PVC pipe. My mother clutching Diane’s hand.

And then the weight against my shoulder blades.

Two hands. Hard. Deliberate. Driving me forward toward the open, blazing stairwell.

I had assumed it was my father in a blind rush to flee. I had assumed it was panic. But panic is sloppy; panic bumps and scrambles. This shove had been centered, braced, and timed right as the floor began to cave.

"I need to see the fire inspector's preliminary report," I told Marcus.

"You can't just walk into the fire station, Jo. If they think you’re in Chicago, the minute you appear, they’ll change their story. They'll say it was a misunderstanding. They'll say they searched for you."

"Then we don't go to the fire station," I said, setting the file down on the coffee table. "We go to Evelyn Vance."

Marcus paused. "Your aunt?"

"Grandma Helen's estranged sister. The lawyer who drew up the will."

Evelyn Vance had stopped coming to Thanksgiving dinners when I was twelve. I remembered her as a sharp-featured woman who wore impeccably tailored gray suits and spoke to my father like he was an unpaid intern who had failed his probation period.

Ten minutes later, with Marcus holding the phone to my ear, I dialed the office of Vance & Sterling Attorneys at Law.

"Evelyn Vance’s office," a receptionist answered.