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“That seems stingy.”

“That’s because it is.”

She made it to the door before I stopped her.

“Sandra.”

She looked back.

“Thank you.”

Her expression changed just enough for me to see the woman under the title again.

“Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “Send me something good enough to bury the body.”

Then she left.

I sat alone in the blue light, staring at Frame 187 on my screen.

I put my hand on the trackpad and closed the folder without deleting the file.

I was not protecting it.

Because I was not ready to lie to myself about what it had been.

Then I opened the day’s practice contact sheet, found three clean, brutal, technically excellent frames of Evan in motion, and started building the kind of replacement deck that made executives forget they had ever wanted honesty in the first place.

Somewhere between the third crop and the fifth tonal adjustment, my phone buzzed.

A text.

Evan: Did you stop it?

I stared at the screen.

No greeting. No softening. No punctuation.

Just the question that mattered.

I typed back.

Me: Yes. It’s out of the review path. Walsh doesn’t get it.

Three dots appeared.

Paused.

Appeared again.

Then:

Evan: Okay.

That was all.

No forgiveness.

No warmth.