Roz and I looked enough alike that strangers always guessed sisters, but that was where the easy comparison ended. She was quick and loud where I was measured and quiet. She had shoulders like she was perpetually ready to carry bad news and a face that people trusted within about six seconds. She’d been an ER nurse for twelve years and spoke about chaos the way some people talk about weather. Calmly. With good shoes.
I laid out the statements, the calendar entries, the dates. I told her about the pattern. About the hotel. About the way it kept repeating until the repetition itself felt intimate.
Roz listened without interrupting, which was how I knew she understood the scale of it.
When I finished, she took the legal pad out of the grocery bag, clicked a pen open, and said, “Okay. Here’s what we’re not going to do. We’re not going to cry on his shoulder so he can control the narrative. We’re not going to warn him. We’re not going to give a man with expensive suits and a god complex time to move money.”
I stared at her.
She pushed the pen toward me. “You used to do this for a living.”
I looked down at the blank yellow page.
My stomach twisted. “This is different.”