I wondered what it must have been like to grow up in a place like this. It couldn’t have been easy. Vanessa must have risen from the ashes like a phoenix.

“We should get started,” she said. She turned back for the kitchen and I followed her. She began tossing garbage on her way. “Just so you know, he’s going to fight me on every single thing. He’ll go through the bags, so make sure your trash is legit.”

“Legit trash. Got it.” I grabbed a crumpled chip bag and a greasy Chinese takeout container. “There’s some mail here,” I said, nodding at the end table. “Should we make a pile? Looks like these are for your sister.”

She was looking at a toaster with a frayed wire. “Yeah. Thanks.” She shoved it in her bag.

The toaster was concerning. This place was a huge fire hazard. Exits were blocked, the stove had crap all around it. I bet the smoke alarms didn’t work, and there was no way he’d ever find an extinguisher in this mess. This was dangerous. I didn’t like the thought of Grace being here. At all.

“Did Annabel live here with the baby?”

Vanessa shook her head. “No, never with the baby. She had some roommates at a house in Hopkins. When she started using again, they kicked her out and she stayed here for a few weeks. I have no idea where she slept. Her old room is full of car parts.”

I wandered the living room, leaving things so obviously garbage it made me cringe. I found more mail and added it to the pile. Then more. And more. It looked like he’d grab it from the mailbox and then set it down somewhere in the living room and forget it. “There’s a lot of mail here. You said you pay the bills, right?”

“Yeah. I get all the important stuff sent to my apartment.” She made a face at a plastic fish tank with a rotting tomato in it. She looked up at me over it. “I bet when you woke up this morning you couldn’t imagine how many times you’d be muttering ‘What the fuck?’ by ten a.m.”

I snorted.

She scanned the living room and sighed. “You know, I’m not usually humiliated this frequently in front of the same person. This is a new personal best for me.”

“You shouldn’t be embarrassed about this. It’s not your fault,” I said.

“Where’s the mail pile?” Vanessa asked, waving a white envelope. “I found another one.”

I nodded to the end table by the sofa and she walked to it. She stood over the stack I’d already begun and picked up the top letter. The corners of her lips fell. Then she tore it open and stood there reading it, her frown deepening.

“What is it?” I asked.

She shook her head and looked from the page to the pile of letters. “Oh my God…” she breathed. “It’s so much worse than I thought.”

I set my trash bag down. “What?” I cleared the space between us and took the paper from her hand.

It was a bill for Annabel for an emergency room visit.

I looked at the stack and picked up half of the envelopes and flipped through them. There had to be twenty, twenty-five different bills here. Clinics, urgent cares, hospitals.

Vanessa looked at me, her face white. “She was drug seeking. Faking injuries to get prescription meds.” She paused. “And she was doing it while she was pregnant.”

* * *

Vanessa was quiet the whole way home. When we pulled into the parking garage and I turned off the engine, she sat there a moment, staring straight through the windshield.

“Look,” I said. “There was only one clinic visit while she was pregnant. And we don’t know if she took the pills they prescribed her.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand how a doctor could give a pregnant woman a narcotic.”

“Liability. Doctors can’t prove or disprove pain. If they deny her pain control, they can be sued.”

She took a deep breath and then pivoted to face me in the seat. “Do you want to go to Duluth today?”

I wrinkled my forehead. “What?”

“Duluth. You know, two hours up north? We could go see the Christmas lights at Bentleyville and do the lake walk.”

I sucked air through my teeth. “I don’t know…”

“What?”

“Why don’t we just stay here? I can make us lunch.”

She smiled. “Oh, I see. You do want to hang out with me, but you don’t do spontaneity.”

“I can be spontaneous,” I said defensively.

She smirked. “Oh yeah? When’s the last time you did something that wasn’t thoroughly planned? And stuff inside your apartment building doesn’t count. That’s still your safe space.”

“Well, I saved a man from an avalanche today.”

She laughed. It was good to see the humor return to her face.

“Doesn’t count,” she said, still smiling. “You’re a fixer, so today’s emergency was totally in your wheelhouse. I’m talking about a genuine, spur-of-the-moment, seat-of-your-pants fun thing.”

I had nothing.

How did this woman have my card so thoroughly pulled?

When I didn’t answer, she cocked her head. “That’s what I thought. You thrive on predictability.” She narrowed her eyes. “I bet that’s why you like the job you have.”

“How do you mean?”

“You like being in control. And what better way to feel like the master of destiny than to beat all the odds with everything stacked against you? Make innocent men out of the guilty.”

I mulled this over. “I never thought of it that way.”

“You’re not that hard to figure out, Adrian Copeland. Even your hobbies are planned. You run races that you train for for months, you work, work, work—you are a creature of habit. A total control freak. Your dang junk drawer is organized.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You looked in my junk drawer?”

“I was looking for a spoon for my coffee. I was not prepared to see that. Your paper clips were all color coordinated, and you had a little caddy for your loose batteries—” She shuddered. “I can’t even talk about it. It really freaked me out.”

I snorted.

“I promise you, you will not implode if you do something you didn’t plan on today.” She grinned at me. “Come with me. It’ll be an adventure. And there’s this Italian restaurant on Lake Superior and I swear to God, it’s the best Italian food in Minnesota.”