At the time, I’d barely noticed it.
Now that detail seemed important.
After Lily left with Dad’s longtime neighbor, who’d offered to help care for her, Jonathan asked whether I remembered anything more.
I recalled visiting the Whitcomb estate several months earlier when Lily dropped her stuffed rabbit near the office entrance.
As I bent to pick it up, I saw Preston’s father talking with an auburn-haired woman whose hair was tied in a loose knot.
Both stopped speaking when I appeared.
I remembered her glancing at a blue folder on the desk while Preston’s father hurriedly shut a drawer.
The memory remained incomplete, but it prompted another recollection: the night before my fall, Preston had asked whether I still had the appointment notebooks I’d used before Lily began school.
Those notebooks were kept in a wicker basket beneath our staircase.
When I mentioned them, Jonathan immediately arranged for police to preserve the basket during their authorized examination of the property.
