“Their sessions seemed normal, for the most part. He talked about his job at the hospital. There was this kid who kept coming in with bruises, but no one could prove he was being abused. I guess he was about my age.” Raven took in a breath, blowing it out slowly. “One night the kid came in and he was banged up so badly, he had internal injuries. My dad tried to save him but he couldn’t. After that, he started taking pills to sleep, and when his prescription ended, he stole another bottle from Mom’s pharmacy. He kept stealing them, and that’s why my parents were fighting all the time. Because he wouldn’t stop taking them.”

“So he went to see Evelyn, hoping to get help.”

Raven nodded, but there was a knot between his brows. He could feel it, and the headache forming behind it. “My mom threatened to leave my dad if he didn’t get help. And it sounds like Evelyn did help him, at first. But toward the end of his sessions, Evelyn started crossing out my mom’s name in his file.”

Jack snorted, head tilting to the side. “She blacked it out? Like a government document?”

“She attacked it,” he said, holding up one of the copied pages. In three separate places, his mother’s name had been slashed to oblivion. “She must’ve used scissors, or maybe a letter opener. I wish I could’ve seen the original file. Did you notice anything when you were making copies?”

Jack shook her head. “The pages went through the copier so fast.” She frowned, peering at the places where Arianna had been sliced through with thin, sharp lines. “Why would Evelyn do this?”

“Maybe she’d fallen for my dad at that point. Maybe she wanted him to divorce—” He broke off at the sound of clattering on the other side of the door. “Sounds like the boys are dueling with fire pokers again.”

“I’m on it.” Jack rose from the bed. She was only gone a couple of minutes, and when she returned, the smell of roast marshmallows told Raven that the boys were making s’mores. He’d taught them that, one late October evening when their mother had promised to attend Connor and Dylan’s school play and had failed to make an appearance. Again. By the end of the night, their faces were stained with chocolate instead of tears and their sobs had given way to shrieks of laughter.

Raven’s heart hurt when he thought about it. His hands shook at the thought of his father seeing someone behind his mother’s back. But none of that compared to how he felt when the text message popped up on his phone, containing a video of Jack burning clothes in her fireplace.