Amara's day

The Hargrove house at seven in the morning, Amara parked on the same street with her coffee. She'd been coming here every day since the break-in, photographing the driveway, logging Robert's car movements, watching the kitchen window like it was a screen she could read. Today was different. Today she'd called in a favor with a paralegal at a family law firm in White Plains who owed her from a case two years ago, and the woman had pulled the public filings on the Hargrove estate—trust documents, property records, the works. One file stood out: a sealed settlement from 2019, Hargrove v. Hargrove, filed by Patricia and dismissed within sixty days. No details in the public record. But the timing mattered. Margot would have been thirteen. Amara sat in the car with the paper in her lap and felt something click into place—not proof, but a shape. A door. She photographed everything and drove to a copy shop in Mount Vernon. She needed a second witness before she told anyone. She needed Destiny's sister to stop calling her phone with warnings she couldn't yet explain. She turned her ringer up and waited for Maya to call again. microFlavor: On the passenger seat, her coffee cup toppled when she braked at a stop sign — dark liquid spreading across the paralegal's documents, across Hargrove trust numbers and the 2019 case file number. She pulled over and dabbed at the pages with her sleeve, coffee soaking through, and for a moment she just sat there watching the brown stain spread over Patricia Hargrove's name. A mess. Something she'd have to explain if anyone asked why those files looked like that. She put the cup in the cupholder and kept driving.