The drawer opens with a soft click.
Inside are three things.
A thick envelope.
A hard drive.
And a leather journal.
I sit on the velvet stool and stare at them as if they might rearrange themselves into a less consequential pattern. Then I open the envelope first.
Inside are photographs.
Not scandalous ones. No hotel rooms, no tawdry embraces. Margaret was too disciplined for melodrama. These are cleaner than that, deadlier because they are administrative. Ethan entering the Clayton apartment repeatedly over months. Lauren with him at restaurant patios on afternoons he told me he was in Chicago. A receipt trail summarized across neatly typed sheets. Copies of corporate transfers. A property diagram. A memo from a private investigator.
Beneath them is a handwritten note from Margaret.
Claire,
Proof is mercy when intuition has been made to feel like madness.
Men like Ethan survive by exhausting women into self-doubt.
Do not doubt yourself again.
I close my eyes.
There it is.