My legs stopped working while I carried food to my husband’s birthday party. He stood over me and roIIed his eyes.

Three months later.

The snow was melting across the rolling hills of Northern Kentucky, leaving patches of wet, dark earth beneath the gray February sky.

I stood on the back patio of our Covington house.

I was leaning heavily on a carbon-fiber cane, my right leg braced in a lightweight orthotic, but I was standing. On my own two feet.

Every step still felt like walking on broken glass, and the physical therapists said I would likely walk with a slight limp for the rest of my life. But I was upright. The Prussian blue had done its work, and the human body, in its stubborn, miraculous resilience, had refused to stay down.

The house behind me was completely empty.

All the furniture had been auctioned off by the bankruptcy trustee. The walls were bare, the rooms echoing with hollow silence. The bank had taken possession, and a moving van sat in the driveway, holding the few personal items that actually belonged to me and Tara.

Tanya Eastman, the paramedic who had saved my life on that sunlit October afternoon, walked up the patio steps carrying two cardboard cups of black coffee.

She held one out to me. "Decaf. Certified straight from the diner drive-thru. I watched them pour it myself."

A faint smile touched my lips as I took the cup. "Thank you, Tanya."

Tanya had become a steady friend over the long months of recovery, visiting me during my rehabilitation sessions at the Drake Center, checking in as the trial preparations consumed my days.

"How's the sentencing hearing looking?" Tanya asked, leaning against the patio railing.

"The plea deal is off the table," I said, watching steam rise from the coffee cup. "The Georgia prosecutor refused to drop the death penalty for Clara's murder. Leo and Freya are going to spend the rest of their lives in separate maximum-security facilities in two different states. They will never speak to each other again."

"Good riddance," Tanya said softly. "They deserve worse."

Just then, Tara walked out through the back sliding glass door, carrying a small metal garden trowel and a thick pair of leather work gloves.

"Jude," Tara said, her brow furrowed in confusion. "The utility company sent a crew out to mark the property lines for the bank auction. The surveyor said there’s an undocumented excavation behind the detached garden shed."

I turned, leaning on my cane. "What excavation?"

"He said the ground radar flagged an anomaly beneath the concrete pavers Leo laid down two summers ago," Tara replied, looking toward the far corner of the yard where the overgrown arborvitae trees cast long, dark shadows. "The surveyor thought it was an old septic tank, but the city records say this lot was never on septic."

A cold, familiar dread crept into the back of my neck.

Leo had spent three weeks laying those pavers in June of 2021. He had refused to let anyone help him. He had told me he was building a secluded reading garden for my thirty-first birthday—a project he mysteriously abandoned halfway through, leaving only a six-by-four-foot raised stone bed planted with decorative hostas.

"Call Detective Miller," I told Tara, my voice barely above a whisper.

"Judith, it's probably just buried construction rubble," Tanya said gently, noticing the sudden pallor in my face.