Chapter SEVEN #2
"Why was this on my permission slip?"
"Maybe she wrote it on the closest paper she had."
Mei thought of Grace writing Grandma's number on a grocery
receipt for her. Her mother had been leaving little emergency maps everywhere. Detective Ruiz ran the number. It belonged to a family-law attorney named Linda Parker, now retired.
Parker agreed to speak with investigators and confirmed Grace had met with her twice.
Attorney-client confidentiality did not disappear simply because Grace had died, so what Parker could reveal was limited and required legal review.
But one fact emerged through records Grace herself had taken from the office: she had requested information about emergency custody and a protective order.
"She was planning all of this," Mei said.
Grandma sat across from her at the kitchen table. "Planning does not always mean a person knows exactly when they will go. Sometimes planning is how they become able to leave."
"She had the storage unit. The lawyer. The note to you." "Yes."
"Why Thursday? Why not Wednesday?"
Grandma's face softened. "You are asking the question survivors
ask when they want the past to offer one different door." "Maybe one day would've mattered."
"Maybe."
* * *
Family court was less dramatic than criminal court and somehow more exhausting.
Grandma's lawyer spoke in calm paragraphs about temporary custody, safety concerns, and best interests.
Daniel's lawyer spoke about parental rights, reunification, and "unverified allegations."
Mei listened from a separate room over video because nobody wanted her sitting across from Daniel.
The judge asked whether she wanted to speak privately.
Mei did.
A court officer brought her into a smaller chamber with two chairs and a box of tissues she refused to look at. The judge was a woman with silver hair and bright red glasses.
"You understand I am not deciding the criminal case?" she asked.
"Yes."
"I am deciding where you stay while adults work through several serious issues."
Mei nodded.
"Do you feel safe at your grandmother's house?"
"Yes."
"Do you want to return to your father's house right now?"
"No."
"Why?"
Mei had prepared an answer.
The prepared answer vanished.
"Because I don't know what he'll do if I'm alone with him."
The judge did not react dramatically.
"Has he threatened you?"
"He calls. He says people are putting things in my head. He wants me to come home. He threw a mug before I left."
"Anything else you want me to know?"
Mei looked at the red glasses.
"He scares me even when he's being nice."
That sentence surprised her.
The judge asked no follow-up about the murder. She thanked Mei and sent her back to Grandma. The temporary order kept Mei with Lillian. Outside the courthouse, Alex bought vendingmachine crackers and called them lunch.
"This system is disrespectful to food," he said.
Grandma ignored him.
Mei sat on a bench, exhausted.
"I thought I'd feel different."
Lillian sat beside her. "Because the judge said you can stay?" "Yeah."
"Your nervous system has not read the order yet."
Mei looked at her. "Did Dr. Sato tell you to say that?" "No. I am naturally wise."
For once, Mei did not argue. The order changed practical things.
Daniel could not remove Mei from school.
He could not demand she return home. Any contact had to follow restrictions set by the court and protection order.
But paper did not change habit overnight.
At school, Mei still checked the parking lot.
At Grandma's, she still listened when a truck slowed.
At night, she still sometimes imagined Daniel standing outside the window despite knowing the second floor was too high.
Then a different kind of evidence arrived.
Grace's former coworker, Nina Alvarez, contacted Detective Ruiz after seeing a news report about the reopened case.
Nina had been the friend Grace asked to stay with.
She still had an old email account. Inside it were messages from Grace.
Not many. Enough. One read: If I chicken out Friday, remind me what I said today.
I don't want the kids thinking this is what love is supposed to feel like.
Another: He apologized again. I know how this goes.
Nice for a week, then angry that I am not grateful enough.
Mei read the messages with Ruiz and Grandma present.
"She knew the pattern," Mei said.
Ruiz nodded. "She described a pattern."
The wording mattered legally.
Emotionally, Mei understood something else.
Daniel's kindness after the mug - the mochi ice cream, the dinner, the gentle questions - had not been unique.
Grace had lived inside the same weather system.
Sunny after a storm. Storm after sunny. Mei had thought she was uniquely bad at predicting him.
Maybe the point had always been that nobody could predict him enough to be safe.
Nina also remembered Grace telling her she had copied important documents and stored them outside the house.
That matched the storage unit. The pieces kept finding one another.
Mei no longer felt like the entire case rested on a twelve-year-old's memory.
For the first time, she let herself imagine the possibility that the truth could stand even if her voice shook.
* * *
"That's it?"
"Anything stronger would be pretending."
Mei hated honesty when it refused to comfort her. That
afternoon, they went through one more photo box. Not for evidence. Grandma made that rule explicit.
"Ruiz can search evidence. We are searching for your mother."
They found Grace at a school dance in a silver dress. Grace holding a fish she had apparently caught and clearly did not want to touch. Grace asleep on the couch with newborn Mei on her chest. Alex found a video from his old phone. Grace sat at the kitchen counter helping him study algebra.
"Move the negative," fourteen-year-old Alex said on the video.
Grace groaned. "Where does the negative move? Does it have rent money?"
Off camera, Daniel laughed.
Everyone in Grandma's kitchen went quiet. The laugh was warm. Normal. Mei watched her younger family interact and felt the same confusion she had felt on the bus. How could a home contain that sound and later contain murder? Alex paused the video.
"I forgot he used to be funny."
Grandma did not answer immediately. "Remembering a good moment is not defending what he did later."
"Feels like it."
"That feeling is not a rule."
Alex played the video again.
This time Mei watched Grace. Halfway through the clip, Daniel reached across the frame to take Grace's phone from the counter. Grace's hand snapped toward it.
"Don't," she said.
Daniel laughed. "What, you got secrets?" The younger Alex filming did not react.
Grace did.
Only for a second. Her smile disappeared. Then she forced it back. Adult Alex froze the video.
"Did you see that?"
Mei nodded.
Grandma leaned closer. It was nothing a prosecutor could build a case on. A husband teasing. A wife reacting. Context supplied by hindsight. Still, the clip upset Alex.
"I was right there."
"You were fourteen," Grandma reminded him.
"I keep being fourteen in everybody's answer."
"Because you keep trying to assign an adult's responsibility to a fourteen-year-old."
He pushed back from the table.
"I need air."
Mei followed him to the porch. They sat on the steps beneath the new camera.
"You okay?" she asked.
"No."
"Same."
Alex rubbed both hands over his face. "I used to think Dad got worse after Mom died. Maybe he did. But maybe I just noticed more because she wasn't there absorbing all of it."
Mei considered that.
"Do you remember them fighting a lot?"
"Not like screaming every day. More like... rules. He wanted to know where she was. Who she texted. Why she bought something. He'd act like it was normal husband stuff."
"Did Mom ever look scared?"
"Sometimes annoyed. Sometimes tired. Once she told me if she ever asked me to take you to Grandma's, I should just do it and not argue."
Mei turned toward him.
"When?"
"A month before she died."
"You never told police?"
"I forgot. Or I didn't understand it mattered. I remembered when Ruiz started asking about Mom leaving."
"Tell her."
"I will."
Alex looked across the yard. "I wish she'd asked."
"Asked what?"
"Take you. That night. The day before. Anytime. I would've done it."
Mei believed him.
The next morning, Ruiz called with an update about the storage unit.
The archived envelope contained photocopies of both children's birth certificates, immunization records, school contact information, and a handwritten budget.
Grace had calculated rent for a small apartment, deposits, groceries, utilities, and legal fees.
At the bottom she had written: I can do this.
Three words. Mei requested a copy after the prosecutor approved it.
She taped it inside the cover of her sketchbook. Not because the sentence was evidence. Because it was her mother's voice speaking past the ending.
* * *
The search warrant changed the case from a memory investigation into a physical one.
Detective Ruiz did not let Mei watch the search, which Mei pretended to resent and secretly appreciated.
Daniel had been ordered away from the property while officers entered the house.
A digital-forensics technician, a crime-scene investigator, and two detectives spent most of a Thursday moving through rooms Mei had known since kindergarten.
By evening, the house no longer felt like her childhood home in her imagination. It felt like a sealed container being opened. Ruiz came to Grandma's after dark. She took off her coat but did not accept coffee, which Grandma interpreted as a sign the conversation mattered.
"We recovered several items," Ruiz said. "None of them proves the entire case by itself. Together, they may be important."
Alex sat forward. "What items?"
"First, we found the purple pencil case. The note was not inside."
Mei's hope dropped.
"However, the case had been placed in a kitchen trash bag with several papers from Grace's belongings. One of those papers was a torn grocery receipt."
Mei's fingers tightened around the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
"Was it hers?"
"We believe so. Only part remains. The visible handwriting says, 'Nai Nai - always.'"
Grandma closed her eyes.
"He tore it up," Alex said.