The forensic examiner Patricia had sent to the storage unit was a woman named Dr. Ingrid Solano, and she worked with the focused efficiency of someone who had spent twenty years in a field that did not tolerate imprecision.
Her preliminary findings arrived on a Monday in a six-page report that Patricia forwarded to Mia with a single line of her own text at the top:
Read page four first.
Mia read page four first.
Dr. Solano had analyzed both composition notebooks using ink dating techniques, paper composition analysis, and handwriting verification against three confirmed Lila Bennett writing samples Patricia's team had sourced from signed documents. The conclusion was unambiguous: the notebooks were authentic. The ink was consistent with the dates written inside. The handwriting matched
