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.”

The ballroom at the Westlake Manor was draped in ivory silk and filled with white lilies.

Two hundred people were in attendance: old neighbors, Frank's engineering associates, school board members who worked with Miriam, and college friends of Diane’s. A large, framed portrait of me—taken five years ago at a cousin’s wedding where I had been forced to wear an unflattering beige dress—sat on an easel flanked by burning votive candles.

Miriam was seated in the front row, wearing black lace and weeping silently into a handkerchief. Frank stood beside her, his hand resting solemnly on Diane’s shoulder.

At the podium, Frank cleared his throat.

"We are gathered here not in anger at the cruel fate that took our home and our oldest daughter," Frank began, his voice projecting through the sound system with practiced grief. "We are here to celebrate Josephine’s life. She was a quiet soul. Independent. She preferred to walk her own path."

"A path that apparently ended in a chimney fire," a voice echoed from the back of the hall.

The microphone squealed with feedback.

The murmurs began instantly. Heads turned. Chairs scraped against the parquet floor.

I stood in the double doorway of the ballroom.

I was not wearing black. I wore a tailored charcoal wool suit provided by Evelyn Vance. My medical boot was gone, replaced by a low-heeled leather boot that hid the compression brace beneath it. My hair was pulled back tight, revealing the faint burn scar just above my collarbone.

Beside me stood two detectives from the Cuyahoga County Arson Investigation Unit, accompanied by Evelyn Vance carrying a thick leather briefcase.

The silence that hit the room was sudden and suffocating.

Miriam turned her head. Her face lost every drop of blood, turning the color of wet chalk.