Not a Misstep

Karen's POV

Early the next morning, right after I dropped Nadia at Martha's, Luis's car pulled up in front of my house. He didn't get out. Just lowered the passenger-side window.

"Get in. Twenty minutes. I can't have anyone seeing you walk into the station."

I slid in and went straight for it. "What did Reeves say?"

Luis handed me an unsigned scene summary. "You've never seen this document."

I barely made it past the first line: abnormal force to the neck, blunt-force trauma to the back of the head, guardrail abrasion inconsistent with the direction of the primary fatal injury.

"So she didn't just fall off the swing."

"Dr. Reeves's preliminary opinion is that it doesn't support a simple misstep," Luis said, staring through the windshield. "Also—estimated time of death is twenty to thirty minutes before the first parents called it in. The kid may not have gone down at the moment she was found."

I turned to the second page. Drag-like abrasion on the inside of the guardrail. Uneven mud on the soles. The final body position too neat—like someone had adjusted her.

"Someone moved the scene."

"Maybe," Luis said. "Or panicked bystanders made it worse. Either way, don't get happy too fast. It also points another direction—someone had a confrontation with Iris and staged it to look like an accident."

He still wasn't looking at me, but the word someone sat between us like a weight.

"If I'd done it," I said, setting the report down, "I wouldn't pick a spot where everyone knows I hated her."

Luis finally turned. "Sometimes people don't pick the smartest way. Especially an angry mother."

"Then you should also know—a truly smart person would pick that way on purpose."

He didn't argue. He took the report back. "Answer my question. Last night, 7:30 to 8:10. Where were you?"

I gave it to him piece by piece: the campaign donor dinner, the pharmacy stop for Nadia's inhaler, Ellen's missed call in the car, traffic on Oak Street, getting home to find Nadia gone, Martha's call about the playground, then turning around. Every point had a card swipe, location ping, or call log behind it.

"If the time of death is earlier," I said, "then it's even less likely it was me. Before I got there, the story was already built: old grudge, the scene, the video, Patrice's tears."

Luis tapped the steering wheel once. He didn't deny it.

When I got home, Victor set a cup of coffee beside my hand like nothing had happened. His voice was steady.

"I spoke with the hospital's PR. Starting today, no interviews. One message: you're willing to cooperate. Everything else goes through the attorney."

"When did you find out Iris went to the swings alone?" I asked.

His fingers paused. "What?"

"Last night you said, 'A child shouldn't be over there alone.' Police haven't made that public. Patrice could barely speak. How did you know Iris was alone before she died?"

Victor slid the coffee closer—so natural it was almost perfect. "That's what people in the neighborhood are saying. Luis was there, wasn't he?"

"Luis didn't tell me."

"Then maybe a reporter did. Karen, your memory's going to be messy right now. That's normal."

I didn't take the cup. He kept going in that mild, professional tone—smooth enough to make anyone else believe I was already falling apart.

"You need sleep. You need to stop picking at details. The more anxious you get, the easier it is for people to paint you as unstable."

The sentence wasn't wrong. The order of things was.

Last night he'd soothed me first, then mentioned Iris shouldn't have been alone. This morning he treated it as public knowledge. But if the time of death was earlier, then in that gap before she was found, not many people should've known Iris had gone there by herself.

I looked at Victor. He stood in the morning light, shirt cuffs perfectly straight, composure exactly where a husband's should be. And inside that composure, for the first time, I heard something cold.

The real danger might not be that they were making me the killer.

It might be that someone already knew exactly how to feed me to everyone.

Victor leaned down and kissed my forehead. His voice dropped. "Don't investigate this on your own anymore. Trust me."

I looked up at him, and something locked into place—

He'd known before I did that Iris went to the swing area alone.