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expected a “ma’am” after it, and it hit her that he’d been acting that way ever since she’d come through the door. Reserved, serious—and, outside of the cheesy getup, very un-Trent-like. When he’d greeted her, he had even called her Brenna—not Spec or B. Spec or Spectator Sport or any of the other stupid nicknames he assaulted her with on a daily basis. Brenna. Her actual name . “Trent, is something wrong?”
    “No. Why do you ask?”
    Why do you ask?
    “Oh, wait. I almost forgot. You got some messages.” He tapped his mouse, and his sober-looking desktop replaced Kim Kardashian’s barely covered ass, as though it were the next thought in someone’s very strange stream-of-consciousness. He opened the message file. “Okay, first of all, you got a new client query.”
    “We can’t take any new clients for at least three months.”
    “I know,” Trent said, “but this lady seemed nice. Her son went missing seven years ago.”
    “What’s her name?”
    “Sophia Castillo.”
    Brenna nodded. “I know her.”
    “She didn’t say she knew you.”
    “She doesn’t.” Just to make sure, Brenna asked for the woman’s phone number and recited it, right along with her assistant.
    “Whoa. That never doesn’t freak me out.”
    Brenna closed her eyes, the memory starting to flood her head . . . “She contacted me five years ago,” she said. “February 15, 2005. Her son had been missing two years. A boy named Robert. I did a little research and found out Sophia Castillo had been divorced two years earlier, her husband had gotten full custody and taken the boy to El Salvador, where he’s from. It’s sad, but it’s not a missing child case. I called her back. Told her I couldn’t take it.”
    Brenna could feel the phone pressed to her ear on February 16, 2005. She could hear Sophia Castillo’s sad, flat voice through the earpiece, all Xanax and loneliness. I’m sorry to hear that, Ms. Spector. Quickly, she pulled the journal out of her bag, and held it. The memory faded. Thank you, Clea .
    Trent said, “I was working for you five years ago. Where was I during all this?”
    “You were right here. You answered the phone when she called, transferred it to me. You were here when I called her back, too.”
    “I so don’t remember that.”
    “Why would you?”
    “But wouldn’t she remember?” he said. “Why didn’t she tell me that she’s already talked to you?”
    “I’m sure she doesn’t remember that day any better than you do.”
    “But it’s her son . . . Her . . . her own little kid.”
    “And I’m probably one of a dozen PIs she called. Five years ago. And I turned her down right away. Who, outside of me, would remember that?” Brenna exhaled. So often, she felt one step removed from the rest of the world, as though everyone were watching a movie, but she was the only one who could keep track of the plot.
    “Just tell Mrs. Castillo we aren’t taking any new cases right now,” Brenna said.
    “Kay-kay.”
    “What else?”
    “Huh?”
    “You said there were other messages?”
    “Oh . . . yeah. Well, Faith called.”
    “Just now?”
    “No, this morning. She said she wasn’t going to be able to pick up Maya.”
    “Yeah, right, I got that, Trent, because I already dropped Maya off and Jim was there and not Faith.”
    “Good, so you got the message.” Trent’s gaze stayed glued to his computer screen.
    Brenna stared down the back of his head. “So,” she asked him. “Did you have a nice conversation with Faith?” This was the final litmus test. Trent, the Trent LaSalle who had worked for Brenna for six years, the Trent whom she often saw seven days a week and now knew better than most all her family . . . that Trent thought Faith was “smokin’ sick hot,” and even though she’d given him no reason, he’d recently come to the realization that “on, like, a sub-atomic level,” Faith felt the same about him. That Trent couldn’t resist any opportunity to