"Your daughter wasted the eighteen hundred dollars meant for her laptop, and now she's running around with some boy who doesn't even go to school.

Patricia filed for an emergency civil preservation order two days later.

The order required Evelyn to preserve all documents, correspondence, financial records, and personal property at the Ridgemont Drive address pending the outcome of the civil proceedings.

It also authorized a third-party inventory of the property's contents if Evelyn failed to comply within forty-eight hours.

Evelyn's attorney — a man named Gerald Fitch who Dennis described as competent but not creative — filed a response calling the request overreaching and invasive.

The judge disagreed.

The order was granted on a Thursday morning.

Patricia called me while I was driving Maya to school.

"The order is in place.

Gerald has been notified.

Evelyn has until Saturday morning to confirm compliance in writing." She paused.

"She's also been formally advised that removing, destroying, or concealing any item covered by the order constitutes contempt."

"Will she comply?"

"Gerald will tell her she has to.

Whether she listens is another matter." Another pause.

"Jason, I want to prepare you for something.

When we do the inventory — and we will do the inventory — we may find more than the cards.

We may find records, receipts, statements.

Things that make the picture larger than it already is."

"Larger how?"

"The wire transfers you've documented account for roughly a hundred and sixty thousand dollars over five years.

The property purchase was sixty-two thousand.

That leaves a significant gap.

I want to know where the rest went before we sit down across from Gerald Fitch."

I pulled up to the school.

Maya got out, then leaned back through the window.

"Call me when you know something."

"I will."

She straightened up and walked toward the entrance.

She was wearing new sneakers.

I had taken her to the store two days ago.

She had picked the least expensive pair on the rack and I had put them back and pointed to a better one and she had looked at me for a long moment before accepting them.

She was still learning that she was allowed to have things.

Saturday came gray and cool.

Patricia, Dennis, a court-appointed inventory specialist named Mr.

Huang, and I arrived at Ridgemont Drive at nine in the morning.

Gerald Fitch was already on the porch.

Evelyn stood in the doorway behind him, arms crossed, wearing the expression of someone who had decided to be wronged.

"This is unnecessary," Gerald said.

"My client has confirmed compliance in writing."

"Then the inventory will be brief," Patricia said pleasantly.

We went inside.

The house was well-furnished.

Good sofa, new appliances, a large television.

A dining table that seated eight.

Framed photos on the walls — Evelyn at various ages, a few of Jason's late wife Sarah, one of Maya as a young child that made my chest tighten.

Mr.

Huang moved methodically through each room with a camera and a clipboard.

The hallway closet was the third stop.

Evelyn stepped forward when Patricia reached for the door.

"Those are personal items."

"Everything in this house is covered by the order, Mrs.

Vance."

Gerald put a hand on Evelyn's arm.

She stepped back.

Patricia opened the closet.

The box was on the middle shelf, exactly where Maya had described it.

Cardboard, sealed with tape, labeled *Tax Documents — 2018* in black marker.

Patricia lifted it down and set it on the hallway table.

Inside: forty-one envelopes.

Every one of them sealed.

Every one of them addressed to Maya Vance in my handwriting.

Birthday cards.

Christmas cards.

The two letters I had mentioned to Patricia.

And something else I hadn't known about — a card I had sent when Maya finished fifth grade, her last year before I left Austin, telling her I was proud of her and that I thought about her every day.

I had forgotten I sent that one.

Maya wasn't there.

I had not brought her, and she hadn't asked to come.

She was at Priya's house, doing homework, doing something normal.

I stood in Evelyn's hallway holding forty-one pieces of mail addressed to my daughter, and I did not say a single word.

Evelyn was watching me from the living room doorway.

Gerald stood beside her.

"Those were for safekeeping," she said.

"I was going to give them to her when she was older."

Patricia looked at her.

"For safekeeping."

"She was a sensitive child.

Some of the cards had money in them.

I didn't want her to—"

"Mrs.

Vance." Patricia's voice was quiet and final.

"I'd strongly recommend you stop talking."

Gerald touched Evelyn's arm again.

This time she listened.

Mr.

Huang documented every envelope.

Patricia placed them in an evidence bag.

I signed the chain of custody form.

We found other things too.

A separate bank account statement tucked in a kitchen drawer — an account I had never known about, opened six years ago, with deposits that matched my wire transfer dates almost exactly.

A second statement showing transfers from that account to a brokerage.

A handwritten ledger in the back of a recipe book, tracking amounts received and amounts spent, in Evelyn's careful, looping handwriting.

She had kept records of everything she took.

Patricia looked at the ledger for a long moment.

Then she looked at me.

"She's meticulous," she said quietly.

"She always was."

We left the house at eleven forty-five.

Gerald walked us to the cars.

At the curb, he pulled Patricia aside and spoke quietly for a moment.

She listened, nodded once, and came back to me.

"He wants to discuss a settlement," she said.