I sat on the edge of the bed. She didn't look up from the paper.
"Start from the cabin. Everything your father said. Every word, every pause, every time he looked away when he should have been looking at you. I want the version you haven't told anyone."
"I told you most of it."
"You told me the version that made you sound like you had it under control. I want the version where you didn't."
So I gave it to her.
I talked for four hours. Natalia wrote in her small tight handwriting that covered every line and left no margin, filling page after page while the Ring on her finger pulsed blue in rhythm with my words. She stopped me eleven times. Twice for clarification. Three times for timeline discrepancies. Six times because I had unconsciously softened a detail to protect her from the weight of it, and she caught every single one.
The woman had a forensic mind wrapped in a body that could freeze a river solid, and she used both with equal lethality.
