“How did she check out?”

She swallows and looks away. “She . . . well, let’s just say she doesn’t have the best track record with the law.”

My eyes widen. “What happened, may I ask?”

She counts off on her fingers. “Petty theft, shoplifting, then grand theft. She started by stealing small items from stores, then from rich neighborhoods—silver, china, expensive objects. Soon, she moved on to jewelry.”

She says it all so matter-of-factly, but as someone raised by a happily married couple in a crime-free family, it’s hard to imagine this upbringing as normal. But that’s what’s shocking to me—this is Sabrina’s normal. It’s also what she’s strived to separate herself from, I surmise.

“That must have been incredibly hard.”

“She’s been in and out of jail most of my adult life. If she’s not in jail, she’s asking me for money. She gambles a lot. She does what she wants, and she blasts into town asking for more. I do everything I can to avoid her, but she usually finds a way to show up when I least want her to.”

I drag a hand over my jaw. “Damn. That’s tough, but it’s amazing that you help your brother.”

The mention of her brother brings a radiance to her eyes. They sparkle when she talks about him. “She left for good when he was fifteen. He’s the reason I went to school in New York. I had a bunch of scholarships, but I needed to stay close and look after him. The only thing she left was the tiny condo she’d owned. I lived there with him when I was in college since he was still in high school. He was the most important thing to me—he still is—and he wound up doing a beautiful thing with his life.”

Her smile is so warm and earnest it reaches someplace far inside me, finding a home. It makes me care even more for her, when I’m already wading into the deep end, so deep that my don’t-get-involved-with-work-associates rule is close to breaking. “Kevin is my hero. He has the biggest heart, and the strongest sense of right and wrong.”

As she tells me about him, a stone of guilt digs against my ribs. Guilt for thinking she was after me for money. Guilt for wondering about her motives. She’s so genuinely focused on her brother, so giving of herself, and with the short straw she drew with her mom, I can’t see her in the same category as the women in my past.

“You’re good people,” I say, silently exonerating myself from doubting her a week ago. I don’t doubt her anymore. I know who she is.

She blushes. “Thanks. Speaking of good people and maybe not-so-good people, what do you think of Kermit La Franchi? He asked my best friend how the story was going. Isn’t that odd?”

I swallow hard, the pleasant balloon of our conversation now popped. “Sabrina, I think he knows about us.”

She cringes. “What?”