THE MAFIA BOSS SAW A POOR GIRL CRAWLING ON THE FLOOR WHILE 20 PEOPLE FILMED HER HUMILIATION—BUT WHAT HE DID NEXT LEFT THE ENTIRE MARKET SPEECHLESS!

At five the next morning, Josie made the first delivery to Chef Duvall in her imagination at least twenty times before she made breakfast. She pictured a clean tray, her invoices in order, and the chef tasting the fruit without looking at her scar. Then she pictured the black sedan outside her shop. Every time the car entered the picture, the rest fell apart.

She didn't go to Cranston that morning. She went to the police station.

Officer Tessa Morgan had taken her original report in June. The officer recognized Josie, offered her the chair beside a desk stacked with traffic complaints, and listened without interruption as Josie explained the three messages.

"Did you answer any of them?" Morgan asked.

"No."

"Good. Keep the originals. Don't follow an anonymous address alone."

Josie handed over screenshots and the number for the sedan's partial license plate, which she had written on a grocery receipt after the car left.

"Can you tell me who attacked me?" she asked.

Morgan's shoulders tightened. "The investigation remains open. The video showed the assault, but it didn't clearly identify every person involved."

"It identified me perfectly."

"I know."

The officer looked at the scar rather than away from it. That small courtesy made Josie want to cry, which annoyed her.

"You should also know," Morgan continued, "the people distributing the original photographs may have coordinated some of what happened. We're looking at that possibility. But suspicion isn't evidence."

Josie nodded. It was the same sentence the bank used about her account, and the supplier used about deliveries, and the landlord used about invoices. Nothing happened until the paperwork was right.

Outside the station, Enzo Ferrante stood beside a modest gray car instead of the armored black SUV she had expected. A woman in a navy jacket stood next to him, holding a leather briefcase.

Josie stopped on the steps. "Are you following me?"

"No," Enzo said. "Officer Morgan called my office because a security camera at the market may have relevant footage. She asked us to preserve it. I came to deliver a copy."

The woman stepped forward. "Mara Vale. Attorney. I'm advising Mr. Ferrante about his market records."

"Then why are you talking to me?"

"Because you may need a lawyer of your own," Mara replied. "I can give you three names. None works for Mr. Ferrante."

Josie looked between them. "I don't have money for an attorney."

"One of the firms runs a legal-aid clinic," Mara said. "You decide whether to call."

She offered a folded sheet containing names and telephone numbers, not a contract or a promise. Josie took it.

Enzo gestured toward the street. "I also want to ask about your mother. You may tell me it's none of my business."

"Why do you remember her?"

"Because she refused to sell bruised fruit as perfect fruit, and she refused to let me buy the whole market out from under its vendors. The second refusal was considerably more expensive."

His expression suggested a private memory.

"When was that?" Josie asked.

"Two thousand four. There was a fire in the old west hall. Repairs were expensive, and the city wanted the property redeveloped. Margarite argued that merchants should own a portion of the market they kept alive."

"My mother sold oranges."

"She also read every page before signing anything."

Josie remembered her father locking business papers in a metal cabinet after Margarite died. He had said the documents concerned the market and could wait until Josie was older. When she turned twenty-one, the cabinet was already gone. Sylvia had cleared it during a renovation while Josie was at work.

"What happened to those papers?" she asked.

Enzo's face hardened. "That's one of the reasons I want to talk."

Mara touched his elbow. "Not on a sidewalk, Enzo. And not without advising Ms. Hartley that you have your own interests."

Josie looked at the lawyer with sudden gratitude.

"I have a delivery to prepare," she said. "Goodbye."

She left before either could answer. Nobody stopped her.

By eleven, she had called the legal-aid number and arranged an appointment for Tuesday. She had also spent forty minutes examining the old wooden table at Hartley's Corner. It was unremarkable: two uneven legs, a shelf underneath, and the sign attached to its back rail with rusted nails. She touched the letters her mother had painted. There were no mysterious symbols in the paint, no visible hidden drawer.

She remembered the message about Evelyn Brennan. On impulse, she searched the name. Evelyn worked part-time at a library in Cranston. A public obituary for Howard listed a daughter, Hannah, and described the accountant as devoted to his family and the preservation of Providence's old markets.

An accountant.

Nobody had mentioned that Howard Brennan was an accountant.

Josie thought of the meetings in the café. Howard had spoken about invoices and the old market only when their conversation briefly wandered beyond weather. She had assumed he was a lonely older man.

She called the library. When Evelyn answered, Josie almost hung up.

"Mrs. Brennan? My name is Josie Hartley."

Silence stretched across the line.

"I know who you are," Evelyn said at last.

"Someone gave me your name. I think your husband was trying to tell me something before he died."

"He isn't here to explain himself."

"No," Josie said. "And I was attacked for meeting him."

Evelyn made a small sound, half breath and half regret.

"I saw your injuries in the newspaper," she said.

"Then you saw what people thought I'd done."

"I saw what I thought you'd done."

Josie waited.

"Come to the library tomorrow after we close," Evelyn said. "Bring someone with you. You shouldn't have to trust me."

Josie asked Officer Morgan if a witness could accompany her. Morgan couldn't attend a private meeting but suggested Josie bring an advocate from the legal clinic. Mara had given her the name of attorney Naomi Cho, who agreed to come after hearing the outline.

The library closed at six. Evelyn let them into a small conference room with a view of wet pavement and a parking lot full of leaves.

She was fifty-nine, with silver streaks at her temples and a wedding ring she turned constantly between her fingers. She looked at Josie's scar, then at the table.

"My husband was a decent man," Evelyn began.

"That isn't why I'm here."

Evelyn nodded. "Sylvia Hartley sent me three photographs in a private message. She said my husband was meeting a girl young enough to be his granddaughter. She said she was worried about me."

Josie took a sharp breath. "My aunt."

"I believed her. Howard had been secretive, and we'd argued about work. I thought he was lying to me about more than meetings."

"What did he tell you?"

"That he was investigating an old trust connected with Hartley's Corner. He said people could lose homes and shops if he was wrong, and worse if he was right."

Naomi leaned forward. "Do you have his records?"

Evelyn reached into her handbag and placed a small notebook on the table. Most of its pages contained grocery lists, appointments, and reminders. Near the end, several names had been written in tiny block letters.

MARGARITE HARTLEY.

FERRANTE MARKET HOLDINGS.

MATTEO FERRANTE.

SYLVIA HARTLEY.

At the bottom, Howard had written a sentence and underlined it twice: THE BENEFICIARY IS TWENTY-ONE. ACCOUNTING MUST BEGIN.

Josie stared at the words. She had turned twenty-one the previous year.

"What beneficiary?" she asked.

"I don't know," Evelyn said. "Howard was an outside accountant. He had been asked to reconcile payments from a business trust. When he found discrepancies, somebody ordered him to stop."

"Who?"

"He wouldn't say. He was frightened."

Naomi photographed the page with Evelyn's permission, noting the date and who held the original. She asked for a complete copy of the messages from Sylvia. Evelyn had saved them all.

"There's something else," Evelyn said.

Her fingers trembled as she unlocked her phone. The screen showed the same three café photographs Josie had seen shared thousands of times. Beneath them was a message from Sylvia saying she hoped Evelyn would confront the woman before Howard humiliated the family any further.

"My daughter saw this," Evelyn said. "Hannah was already angry with her father. She thought he'd abandoned me emotionally, even though he was sitting at our kitchen table every night."

Josie's pulse hammered.

"Was Hannah at the market in June?"

Evelyn closed her eyes. "She told me she went there. She said she shouted at you. Later she said there was a struggle."

"A struggle?" Josie repeated. "I was walking home. Someone hit me from behind with something hard. I needed twelve stitches."

Tears stood in Evelyn's eyes. "I know. I am not asking you to forgive her."

"Did you tell the police?"

"Yesterday. After I learned Sylvia had lied. I should have gone sooner."

For a long time nobody spoke. Josie had imagined finding the person who injured her. She had imagined a monster, a professional hired to hurt her, someone with no face. Instead the name belonged to a grieving accountant's daughter who had accepted a stranger's lie and turned it into violence.

"Your husband died six days later," Josie said.

"His heart had been failing for years. His doctor had warned him. The stress didn't help, but his death was natural."

Josie felt relief and anger in equal measure. At least Howard's death had not been another crime buried beneath the rumors. But it had left her holding an unanswered question.

Evelyn opened the notebook to its last page. A folded photograph fell out. It showed Margarite Hartley standing beside a younger Enzo Ferrante and Howard Brennan in front of the market's repaired west hall. There was a fresh fig tree visible in the corner of the frame.

On the back, in Howard's handwriting, were four words.

ASK ABOUT THE TABLE.

Josie leaned forward.

"What table?" Naomi asked.