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Context determines whether something belongs where it’s been found, or whether its presence changes the scene.

In my work, everything has a place. If something doesn’t make sense, I am allowed to examine it until it does.

I learned a long time ago that proximity does not equal closure.

Distance, on the other hand, can be managed.

So I inventory.

I inventory remains. I inventory scenes. I inventory my days.

I do not inventory my past, mostly because it has proven resistant to categorization.

Unfortunately, my past has just been found in the trunk of Nole’s car.

I make a list.

Just a mental inventory of the things that need to be done before I go home, arranged in an order that suggests this is a normal Friday and not the beginning of something I have been carefully avoiding for a long, long time.

I close out my open tabs. I lock my desk drawer. I wipe down my workspace with more attention than strictly necessary, the way I do when I’m trying to convince myself that order is transferable.

I check my calendar, even though I know exactly what’s on it.

I consider, briefly, the idea of staying the entire day. Running another analysis. Giving myself an excuse to delay.

I don’t.

In my apartment, I pack my bag.

Laptop. Notebook. A book I’ve been halfway through for months because finishing it would mean moving on from the characters and I am simply not ready.

I pause at the coatrack on my way out and debate switching shoes. Something more sensible, quieter on hardwood.

Instead, I pull my phone from my pocket and scroll to a contact I absolutely do not hesitate over because that would imply this is a big deal.

She answers on the third ring.

“What?” Her accent sharpens when she’s annoyed. “It’s my day off. Someone better be properly dead.”

Tamsin is a forensic artist—an expert in facial approximation, biometric mapping, and identifying the exact moment my clinical detachment borders on social dysfunction.

She specializes in the parts of the process that require immense patience and an ongoing commitment to our performative friction.

Her job, essentially, is to put a face back on the dead.

I give her the osteological data: orbital shape and measurements, nasal aperture and form, mandibular contours, and the degree of prognathism. Combined with the biological profile I’ve established, she uses those details to reconstruct a face another person might recognize.

Tamsin calls it restoring dignity.

I call it the application of statistical tissue-depth averages to a calcium-phosphate substrate.

She finds my terminology unnecessarily clinical. I find hers scientifically imprecise. This disagreement has lasted several years and neither of us has shown meaningful improvement.

Regardless, she is the only person at Sterling-Hayes capable of navigating my personal perimeter without triggering a defensive response.

“Technically,” I say, “yes. Historically.”

There’s a pause.