“I’ll come over.”
“You broke up with me twelve hours ago.”
“I know.”
“And now you want to come over?”
“I think we need to separate what happened between us from what you just found.”
Despite everything, that sounded like Stephen.
Methodical.
Careful.
Sometimes infuriatingly sensible.
“Fine.”
He arrived twenty minutes later.
He looked as though he hadn’t slept either.
The first thing he saw was Claire’s photograph sitting on the kitchen table.
He stopped.
“That’s her.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
He picked it up carefully.
“I haven’t seen this exact picture, but that’s the woman.”
I watched his face.
“You weren’t exaggerating.”
“No.”
He glanced at me.
“Lily looks just like her.”
“I know.”
I sat opposite him.
“Tell me everything.”
Stephen did.
Seven years earlier, during Harlow’s headquarters renovation, he’d been assigned to a team digitizing old corporate records. Most were mundane: property deeds, insurance documents, photographs of factory openings.
