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.”

For the next two weeks, Marcus’s barn became our war room.

My ankle was healing, transitioning from a throbbing ache to a tight, stiff stiffness that allowed me to hobble without crutches for short distances. Every morning, Marcus made breakfast—eggs, black coffee, toasted rye—and set it before me without making a production out of my recovery.

He was steady. In the chaotic wreckage of my thirty-one years, Marcus was the only anchor that didn't drift.

"You don't have to be part of this," I told him one evening as he helped me ice the joint. "If this turns into a criminal trial, Frank won't go quietly."

Marcus looked up from my foot. His eyes were dark and very calm. "When you called me at two-thirty in the morning, Jo, you didn't ask me to save your life. You asked me to pick you up. You did the surviving yourself. I’m just making sure you finish the job."

Meanwhile, Evelyn Vance was executing a masterclass in bureaucratic entrapment.

Frank and Miriam had relocated to an extended-stay luxury suite downtown, paid for by the Red Cross and emergency insurance funds. They had already contacted the probate court through their own attorney, quietly notifying the clerk that Josephine Claire Calloway had been unreachable since the incident and that steps should be taken to declare her presumed deceased or legally absent so that the estate could settle.

They had even scheduled a memorial service.

Not in our hometown church, but at an upscale banquet hall in Westlake. A "Celebration of Remembrance," Diane called it on her social media page, complete with a link to a GoFundMe for "The Calloway Recovery Fund."

"They're selling tickets to your funeral, Jo," Marcus observed, looking at Diane’s Instagram post.