# THOMPSON-HAYES: THE INSIDE OUT
## Chapter Two — The Photograph
She sent Nathan and Cole to the living room.
She did not explain. She said: "Give me an hour." They left without arguing, which was what she needed from both of them, and she sat alone at the kitchen table with Cole's phone in front of her and the photograph on the screen.
She looked at it seven more times.
Not at the man — she would learn who he was. At Patricia.
She looked at Patricia's posture. The angle of her shoulder. The specific way she was standing — not leaning toward the man, not leaning away. Upright. Functional. The posture of someone doing a thing they have decided to do rather than a thing they want to do.
That distinction mattered.
Mia had learned, over two years of building cases, that people's bodies
