“But,” I say, because there’s always a but.
“But the paperwork is thin,” he says. “Too thin. No inquest. Just… a decision. Made quickly.”
“How quickly?”
Wyatt flips a page, pushes it toward me. “Same week.”
I frown. “That’s fast.”
He nods. “Exactly. And then there’s the land.”
“The land,” I repeat, already annoyed on Abilene’s behalf.
“Her grandmother owned parcels people didn’t realize were valuable yet,” Wyatt says. “Timber adjacent, close to routes that later got developed. Quiet money. The kind people argue about without putting it in writing.”
“So people were circling.”
“People were watching,” he corrects. “And there were old financial disputes. Not lawsuits, those would’ve left records, buthandshake debts, shared investments, rivalries that never quite died.”
I lean back, processing. “And Bonnie gets hurt. Fire. Suddenly, no one wants to ask questions.”
Wyatt finally looks up at me. His eyes are tired but sharp. “Suddenly, anyone who asks gets told they’re disrespecting a grieving family.”
I swallow. “That’s a hell of a shield.”
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “It works really well in small towns.”
I drum my fingers on the table. “So what are you saying, exactly?”
“I’m saying I don’t know if anyone caused it,” Wyatt says carefully. “But I don’t believe everyone was honest about what happened. Or why.”
“And Abilene?”
His jaw tightens. “She deserves the truth. But not fragments. Not rumors that’ll just lodge under her skin and fester.”
I nod slowly. “So you’re collecting the whole picture before you hand her a single piece.”
“Yes,” he says. Then, softer: “Or before it finds her first.”
I stare at the notebook again. Names. Arrows. The shape of something unfinished.
“Well,” I say finally, “this is officially above my pay grade.”
Wyatt snorts faintly. “Same.”
“But,” I add, meeting his gaze, “you’re not wrong to be worried.”
He closes the notebook as both a decision and a boundary. “That’s what I needed to hear.”
I take another sip of coffee. “So what’s the next step?”
Wyatt hesitates.
And that hesitation tells me everything.
“There’s someone who might know more,” he says. “Or might’ve known more back then.”
I raise a brow. “There always is.”
