What Was Buried

I bought the Elm Street house that spring, using the funds the court had restored to Winnie's trust, with every intention of erasing it down to the dirt. But Prentiss asked me to wait two weeks before the demolition crew came, and to say nothing to anyone about the date.

On the thirteenth night, a motion sensor Prentiss's team had installed along the back fence caught a figure crossing the yard just after midnight, moving straight for the spot where the old patio shed had stood.

I wasn't there for the arrest — Prentiss made sure of that — but he called me at six the next morning. "We got him. Milton Frey, digging up a lockbox buried under the shed foundation. Second set of ledgers, exactly like we thought. It ties him to the Chicago fraud and, it turns out, to helping Preston disappear after the first case six years ago."

I sat with that for a long moment, thinking of a family in another state who'd spent six years believing their case had simply gone cold, never knowing anyone else had been looking.

"Will they be told?" I asked. "The other family. From before."

"Prentiss has already made the call," Ms. Okafor said, when I reached her an hour later. "They've been waiting a long time to hear someone finally believed them."

It wasn't closure, not the clean kind you want after something like this. But it was the last loose thread pulled tight, the last shadow accounted for, and when the demolition crew finally rolled onto the lawn two weeks later, there was nothing left hidden underneath it for anyone to come back for.