"Are you girls sure you'll be set for the afternoon?" Mom asks again.

"Yes, Mom." I roll my eyes with a grin. "With this feast, there's no way we'd starve." Spread before us on the counter are plates filled with cookies, muffins, scones, biscuits, and a cheese board topped with meats, fruits, chutneys, olives, sauces, and of course, cheeses. It is truly a work of art.

"Alright," Mom says. "See you later. And I don't mean to be a party-pooper, but try to get some work done."

"Will do."

Mom leaves. I wait for the garage door to shut, chewing a ginger-apple scone and nibbling some brie on the side.

"Ready?" Zoe asks. She brushes her hands together so orange-cranberry muffin crumbs fall onto her plate.

"I guess so." I still feel bad about snooping through Mom's thing, but the guilt has mellowed enough to where my curiosity outweighs it. Perhaps there's some excitement in the mix, too.

We head up the stairs to Mom's room. The biggest hurdle is finding the key. Luckily, over the past few days, I've been watching Mom, and I saw that she has a keychain in one of her drawers. I cringe when my feet hit a whiny spot on the floor, even though no one is home.

Step, step, step.

I'm in front of her bedside table. The drawer creaks open on the sliding hinges. Inside, she has a few books, some miscellaneous papers, some envelopes. I brush them aside, retrieving the keys underneath. They jangle as I hold them up for Zoe to see.

"Nice," she says.

I open the closet doors and insert a key into the filing cabinet's lock. No luck. It doesn't match. I try another one, but it doesn't fit again. Panic riles up inside me, but I try to tamp it down as I try the next, and another, and another.

One has to work. We can't have another setback.

My jaw sets in concentration while my fingers single out key after key. None of them work until finally, one slips into place.

"Phew," I breathe. The lid swings over the top, all its secrets unveiled. Manila folders are crammed inside, so jam-packed that they are pressing against both sides of plastic.

"That's... a lot." Zoe has an unsure expression.

"Well, you wanted to go through them." I try to grab one, but they're so packed, they're stuck. My index finger doesn't even fit between them. Slowly, I tug on one that's slightly sticking up. After a few seconds, it releases, and I jolt backward. The top sticks out halfway, enough to pull it free.

The Downsville County Crime Family.

"That sounds like a TV show," Zoe whispers.

"Is it?" I ask, paging through the file.

"It'd make a good title."

"How about we each take a half?" I say. "We just need to keep them in order."

Zoe takes the front half while I take the back. I work my way through more recent cases. None of them seem to be related to the pharmaceutical scandal. Then again, I'm not really sure what keywords to look for. Maybe 'Barnes,' 'drugs,' or 'pharmaceuticals.' At least, those are the keywords I'm keeping my eyes peeled for.

File after file gets set aside, forming a tall, beige pile at my side. Then, my eyes snag on the next file name.

The Old Oak Bridge Murder.

This is the case Mom was going to speak about during the conference, the conference she turned down. That was for my benefit, wasn't it?

Of course it was.

Still, I can't shake how strange it is that she won't talk about it. Even weirder was Amber's reaction when I mentioned it. Could this be the case related to Evan's dad?

No. That's too much of a coincidence. And yet it would explain Amber's reaction at a bare minimum. It would explain why she seemed so concerned when I mentioned it was the case Mom would speak about.

Curiosity gets the better of me. I want to know about this case, why it was Mom's last, why no one will talk to me about it. I flip the cover open.

The first thing I see is a picture, a face that seems familiar. The woman has an oval face and protruding cheekbones that cut an angle from her ears to her mouth, which is small and almost birdlike when combined with her slightly protruded chin. She has soft features and fair skin, dark brown hair tied up in a bun.

She looks so familiar, yet I can't place her. What is up with all these things that are familiar yet unplaceable?

"Find anything?"

Zoe's voice snaps me out of my reverie. "Huh?"

"You seem to have found something."

"Me?" I glance back at the file spread across my lap. "No. Just... looking." I quickly set the file aside, though I plan to look more deeply at it some other time.

We finish going through the files. Not one mentions the pharmaceutical case.

"Ugh." Zoe flops backward on the floor, covering her round face with the crook of her elbow. "Nothing."

"Yeah. I guess Mom never worked on that case." My voice sounds distant, and so is my vision as I stare at the Old Oak Bridge Murder file peeking out from under the others.

"I was so sure there would be a connection between you too," Zoe says. "Maybe I was wrong."

"So if there's no connection, do you think this is about Evan, or me?"

"I don't know. The fraud thing suggests revenge on Evan, but then there's all those weird text messages you received. I think it's more of a setup for you, rather than Evan."

"So he was just a pawn?"

"I guess so." Silence pulses between us. We both stare at Mom's empty filing box and the mess on the floor.

"We should put these back," I say. It's a long process shoving the files back inside the case, but we finally get it done.

Zoe stays for dinner. I make a box of mac and cheese for us. Once Zoe has had her fill of pasta, some leftover veggies, and cookies for dessert, she heads home. I bound up the stairs, a bowl of peanut butter caramel cookies and vanilla ice cream in hand. The bowl nestles in the blankets on my bed as my fingers fly across my computer's keyboard.

The Old Oak Bridge Murder.

An hour later, I'm knee-deep in the case. Eleven tabs are open on my screen, but that's only because there are few sources that actually talk about it. The news reports are vague, and so are the other criminal reports I can get my hands on.

The case goes like this: a man named Ronald Keiger was found drowned in the Crawsunk River, about five miles outside this town. According to the coroner's report, he died from the impact of being tossed into the river. His head struck a stone, and he died instantly between 12 and 3 in the morning. He was discovered by someone passing by the river the next morning at six, who called the police.

His wife, Lori Keiger, was accused of the murder. At trial, she was found guilty and sentenced to thirty years in prison.

Hmm. I guess Amber was right. Even if I am convicted, maybe I wouldn't be in there forever. This thought gives me a strange hope, an assurance I shouldn't be looking for.

An assurance I wouldn't be looking for if only I knew I was innocent.

Lori Keiger claims she was out working night shift for her job at the 24/7 diner near her home. She worked her shift until 2, when she is reported by coworkers to have left. The story she tells is that she stayed out until morning, deciding to get some quiet relaxation time and read a book. She says that things were a little tense at home during this time to her husband's stressful job. He needed peace and quiet to think, and she didn't want to disturb him or the kids, who often woke up when they heard the garage door opening. When she came home, she found the kids alone.

Her two kids, whose names were unlisted for privacy reasons, claimed that they heard their dad leave in the night. But in the morning, his car was found at home, parked in their driveway.

Lori said it was strange that it was parked there because it was normally in the garage.

The fact that his car was at home raises the question as to why.

The theory the police determined was that Lori picked up her husband and came back home early. They went for a drive, got in a fight, and she killed him at the Old Oak Bridge.

What sealed this idea were three clues: first, her husband's head wound indicated that he was hit with an object that was jagged, not smooth. A shovel was found inside Lori's car, though she claimed she'd never seen it before, even in their garage. He did not die from hitting his head on the smooth rocks on the bottom of the river, and any rocks floating in the river were too small.

Second, Lori claims she was in the car by herself when she left the diner and went for a drive. However, this was contradictory to the food found in her car. She had two drinks in the car and a feast that could've fed two people. Part of a hamburger was untouched (she claimed it was for her lunch today), as were the nuggets she claimed were for her children. She claimed she just bought extra food so she wouldn't have to cook, but the police thought otherwise. One drink was partially drunk, the other fully drunk.

Finally, there's the question of how the dad got to the old oak bridge. No messages were found on his phone indicating that he had someone pick him up. His car was at home. His kids heard no one ring the doorbell or enter the house, but parents have a way of being very quiet when entering a house. The kids have slept through times when Mom came home and they didn't hear anything.

The words blur together on the screen by the time I finish reading all I can about the case. I rub my eyes, glancing up for the first time in hours. The sound of the garage door makes me jump, and my eyes focus on the clock in the right-hand corner of my computer screen.

It's eight-thirty p.m. I look up, registering that it's dark outside. Mom's home from the salon. I turn back to the article open in my browser. The article is scrolled down to the very bottom, giving me the same facts as all the other sources.

I don't get it. Why is this case so significant? It just seems like an open and shut case of spouse killing spouse. Aren't there dozens of those every year?

I keep reading, keep searching, for why this is a case Mom would be asked to speak on, why Amber reacted so strangely when I mentioned it, but there's nothing interesting or significant about it.

Mom's muffled voice drifts from downstairs. "I'm home."

I move my mouse to exit the tab when the smallest detail, the smallest offhand remark in the article, catches my eye. My hand freezes.

It's unbelievable. It's too much of a coincidence.

Yet, I think I found the connection we were looking for.

Ronald Keiger worked for the HappyMood Pharmaceutical Company.