I woke up missing a kidney.

Gerald Foss was arrested on a Thursday.

I was not in the hospital when it happened.

I had been discharged four days earlier — not to the hilltop house, not to a garbage bag, but to a short-term apartment that Patricia's office had helped arrange while the property transfer was processed.

It was small and quiet and smelled like fresh paint, and I slept in it for eleven hours the first night without waking once.

Patricia called while I was eating breakfast.

"They picked up Foss this morning," she said.

"The warrant covered his home office and his firm's records.

They found the copy of the deed — the one Brenda told him to destroy.

He hadn't destroyed it."

"Why not?"

"Because destroying it would have been evidence tampering on top of everything else.

Foss is many things, but he's not stupid." A pause.

"He also had nineteen years of your father's financial records in that office.

Records that the federal investigators are now very interested in."

I set down my fork.

"What kind of records?"

"The audit from eleven years ago — the one that prompted your father to transfer the house into your name — it was closed without charges.

But Foss kept documentation of everything.

Every asset movement.

Every transfer.

Every account." Patricia's voice was careful.

"It appears your father's cooperation with the investigation into Brenda may be about to become significantly more complicated."

I looked out the window of the small apartment.

The street below was ordinary — a woman walking a dog, a delivery van double-parked, pigeons on a ledge.

"He's going to be investigated," I said.

"It's possible.

The federal investigators are reviewing Foss's files now.

I don't want you to get ahead of this — Charles may have a clean explanation for everything in those records.

But I want you to know before you read it somewhere else."

"Thank you," I said.

"How are you feeling?"

I thought about the question.

The incision was healing — still tender, still pulling when I moved too quickly, but closing.

The apartment was mine for thirty days.

The house transfer was in process.

Brenda had given her testimony and was awaiting a hearing date.

Foss was in custody.

Alyssa had sent a single text message two days after I was discharged — three sentences, no punctuation, clearly written and deleted and rewritten multiple times before being sent — that said she was sorry, that she didn't expect anything from me, and that she hoped I healed well.

I had read it four times and not replied.

"I'm okay," I told Patricia.

"That's enough for now," she said.

After I hung up, I finished my breakfast.

I washed the single plate and the single cup and set them in the drying rack.

I sat back down at the table with my second cup of coffee and opened my laptop.

There was an email from the hospital's compensation review board — an acknowledgment that my case had been formally opened, with a case number and a contact name.

There was an email from a journalist at a regional paper who had somehow found my name and was requesting a comment on the investigation.

I marked it unread and flagged it for Patricia.

There was one more email.

No subject line.

Sent at 2:17 in the morning.

The sender was Charles Montgomery.

I opened it.

It was four sentences long.

*I have been advised not to contact you directly.

I am doing it anyway.

I don't expect forgiveness.

I only want you to know that when I read your mother's name on your intake file — she was listed as your emergency contact, even though she has been gone for nine years — I understood for the first time what I had taken from you by letting Brenda run that house.

I'm sorry.

That is not enough.

But it is true.*