My Lover Protected the Woman Who Destroyed My Sister

Wren started building the file three days after I showed her the photo.

She didn't tell me that's what she was doing. Not at first. She just stopped answering my calls during work hours and started texting back at midnight with things like *still looking* or *found something, need to confirm*. I knew better than to push. When Wren went quiet, it meant she was hunting.

I found out later she was spending every lunch break and stolen half-hour in county records offices, pulling donation filings and corporate disclosures, building a physical case file she refused to keep on her laptop. She told me once, months afterward, that she color-coded everything — green for financial records, yellow for university documents, red for anything that connected the two. She said paper couldn't be hacked. Only stolen. And she dared anyone to try.

It took her four days to find the building.

Four point two million dollars. Donated to the university eleven days after Brooke died. The timing wasn't just close. It was surgical.

She didn't call me when she found it. She sat in her car outside the courthouse archives and stared at the filing for twenty minutes, she told me later, because she'd been hoping — really hoping — that I was wrong about him.

But I wasn't.

—

Leonel took me to dinner that Friday. Somewhere quiet, he said. Somewhere we could talk.

It was one of those places where they don't give you a menu, just bring you whatever the chef decides you should eat. Soft lighting. Candles in hurricane glass. The kind of restaurant where everyone speaks in low voices like they're at a funeral.

He ordered wine. Something French. Something I didn't ask the name of because I wasn't really tasting it anyway.

"You've been so tense lately," he said, reaching across the table to take my hand. His thumb settled over my knuckles, warm and steady. "I'm worried about you."

"I'm fine."

"You're not sleeping. You're not eating." He tilted his head, gave me that look — the one that used to make me feel seen, understood, held. "Have you thought about talking to someone? A grief counselor, maybe. Someone who specializes in this kind of loss."

I looked at our hands. His fingers were laced through mine like we were praying together.

"I don't need a counselor," I said. "I need answers."

He sighed. Not impatient. Just... sad. Like I was a child insisting the monster under the bed was real.

"Naomi." He squeezed my hand. "Sometimes terrible things just happen. And there's no one to blame. Brooke worked hard because she loved her students. That's who she was. But that doesn't mean someone killed her."

His other hand drifted to his wrist. To the watch. Just for a second. Just a light, absent touch, his thumb brushing the glass.

I watched him do it and felt something cold settle behind my ribs.

"I keep thinking about her schedule," I said quietly. "All those demonstration classes. Forty-seven in one semester. That's not normal, is it?"

"I don't know what's normal for teachers." His voice stayed gentle. Soothing. "But I know Brooke would want you to take care of yourself. Not tear yourself apart looking for someone to punish."

He lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles, right there across the table, and smiled at me like I was something fragile he was trying very hard not to break.

I smiled back. I even leaned into it a little, let my shoulder relax, let him think it was working.

But I was adding it to the list. The one I'd started keeping in my head. The watch. The pause on the phone. The lie about Tatum's name. And now this — the soft, reasonable suggestion that maybe my sister's death was just bad luck, and I should stop asking why.

—

Two days later, I called Leonel's office.

His assistant picked up on the second ring, bright and professional. "Mr. Wright's office, this is Stephanie."

"Hi, Stephanie. It's Naomi Peterson." I kept my voice light. Easy. The girlfriend calling about something small. "I'm so sorry to bother you. Leonel mentioned he was holding onto some of my sister's teaching materials — curriculum binders, lesson plans, that kind of thing. I'd like to pick them up this week if that's okay."

There was a pause. Not long. Just the sound of keys clicking, a database being searched.

"I'm not seeing anything like that in our storage logs," Stephanie said slowly. "Let me double-check."

More clicking. A longer pause.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Peterson. There's nothing under your sister's name in our system. But there is a note here that some educational materials were forwarded to another party a few weeks ago, on Mr. Wright's personal instruction. It doesn't say who."

I closed my eyes.

"Okay," I said. "Thank you, Stephanie."

"Of course. I can ask Mr. Wright if you'd like—"

"No. That's okay. I'll ask him myself."

I hung up. Set the phone down on the kitchen counter. Sat very still.

Brooke's lesson plans. The ones she'd spent years refining. The ones she'd annotated in green ink with notes about which students needed extra encouragement, which units worked best in winter, which texts made kids who hated reading actually care.

Forwarded to another party.

I didn't need Wren to tell me who.