Alaina was in hell.

Paperwork hell.

Stacks of papers and files surrounded her, radiating out from the spot where she stood in Lucas McGowan’s tiny office. There wasn’t an inch of clear space on any horizontal surface, and the floor was pretty covered, as well. If Lucas had walked in at that moment, he might’ve thought she’d destroyed his office on purpose. Made a bigger mess just to spite him.

But she knew that forward progress often involved regression. And regression in Lucas’s office looked an awful lot like a hell made up of dozens of manila files and loose papers.

She’d started with the easy stuff. It hadn’t taken long to clean up the items that were obviously trash—food wrappers, to-go coffee cups, empty boxes that had once contained paper clips and pens and staples and had somehow never made their way to the blue recycling bin by the printer—but the harder stuff remained.

Alaina didn’t know how long Lucas had been in business as a private investigator, but she was fairly certain that he’d never filed a single piece of paper. This was confirmed when she opened the lone filing cabinet in the room, a four-drawer gray metal cabinet tucked in one corner of the office. She’d opened every drawer. All of them were empty, save for the hanging folders awaiting files.

She had no idea how Lucas would want his files arranged, so she decided to go with the most obvious: alphabetical. Once they were sorted that way, he could sort them by year, too, if that made more sense to him.

Alaina almost smiled. She had a feeling Lucas wasn’t going to care how or where the files were sorted, as long as they were off his floor and off his chair and off his desk. She wondered how he’d managed to stay in business, seeing how disorganized he was…and then she wondered if hiring him—and paying him a thousand in cash—had been a good decision.

She snorted. As if she had a choice. It wasn’t like private eyes were a dime a dozen in Aspen Falls. And she wasn’t about to hire someone out of the cities. She needed someone local, someone who knew the town. People in Aspen Falls were like all of small-town Minnesota: they kept to themselves and were wary of strangers. Sure, people were nice—Minnesota Nice, don’tcha know?—but they were guarded, too. Some folks said it was their Nordic roots that made Minnesotans this way: stoic, sturdy, hardworking folks. Others said it was because of the long, cold winters, when people spent so much time by themselves or only with close friends and family, that they sealed those bonds rather than seeking out others.

Alaina didn’t know what the answer was, and she didn’t really care. She just knew that there was more to the story behind her brother’s death. And she was convinced that someone in town had the answers she was looking for.

She scooped up a stack of files on Lucas’s desk to sort through. A folded-up, long-forgotten newspaper was underneath them. She rolled her eyes as she reached for it, wondering how dated it was. A week? A month? A year?

It was in her hands, ready to be tossed into the large trash bag at her feet, when she noticed the story in the bottom right corner. Her breathing quickened and her fingers tightened on the thin newsprint she was holding.

It was a story about Noah.

A story she hadn’t read.

Her vision blurred, but not before she saw the headline.

Local Boy Gone But Not Forgotten

The newspaper crumpled in her deathlike grip. Her heart thumped against her ribs.

She hadn’t read it.

After the… after, she’d been too shocked, too traumatized, to do much more than go through the motions. And then, with her own parents paralyzed by grief, she’d donned the armor necessary to guard her heart and had taken over planning the funeral arrangements. Because they hadn’t been able to do it.

So this article, this little feature piece about the tragedy of suicide, these four paragraphs that purported to tell the story of her little brother…she hadn’t read it. How could eighteen years—eighteen years!—be told in a couple hundred words?

It was simple.

It couldn’t.

Noah was more than a single column story in the C section of the local paper. His life was fuller, richer, more meaningful than that.

Alaina swallowed the lump forming in her throat. Because she realized something. Like the article in the paper, she didn’t have the full picture of her brother’s life, either. Waves of guilt washed over her, so strong they almost sent her to her knees. A sob strangled her and she choked it back, reeling from the emotions racing through her. She reached for the stack of files on the chair and sent them crashing to the floor, papers cascading out of them.

She sank down, her hands gripping the wooden armrests, and let the realization hit her full force.

She didn’t know Noah, either. Not because they’d drifted apart. It would be easy—well, easier—if that had been the case.

But the reason she didn’t know her brother was because she’d erected a barrier between them. Oh, he’d tried to stay in touch, to keep the lines of communication open. He was forever calling and texting. And Alaina was forever too busy. Too busy to call him back, too busy even to send an answering text.

Tears streamed down her face. She remembered the last exchange they’d had. Early January, a couple of weeks after Christmas. He’d texted to thank her for the gaming headphones she’d given him, a gift she’d brought over Christmas morning.

Thx for the headphones. They r awesome!

She’d been in the middle of a walk-through at one of her properties, but she’d paused long enough to text back a quick reply.

Glad u like them.

And that had been it. The last thing she’d ever said to him.

There had been texts and phone messages after that from Noah, but she hadn’t responded.

Too busy.

She was always too busy.

She’d spent hours scrolling through the texts he’d sent after her last response committing them to memory. Each word was a tiny knife slicing into her heart, a reminder of just how distant, how unavailable, she’d been.

Was it purposeful? Had she meant to cut him out of her life?

She didn’t think so.

The severing of ties had more to do with embarking on her own, of leaving the past behind so she could make a new life for herself. She’d had to focus, to put herself and her business first.

She took a deep breath.

Because it was more than that.

It was severing ties with her parents. With her overbearing, judgmental, resentful father. And it had been far easier to write them all out of her life than to try to pick and choose what relationships and conversations she wanted to keep going.

She wiped at her eyes, furious with herself that she was crying. It was a weakness, something she hadn’t indulged in in years, and she hated that tears had become almost normal for her.

Alaina glanced back at the newspaper article. Her eyes zeroed in on the hotline printed in bold in the last paragraph. A suicide hotline.

She shook her head. She knew she and Noah hadn’t been close, not since she’d moved out. But she also knew that there was nothing in the messages she’d received that indicated he was depressed. They were normal texts: about video game wins, about a horrible dinner their mother had made, about the weather. They were conversational, not cries for help.

She set the paper back down on the desk.

No, she thought, shaking her head.

The newspaper could claim what it wanted, but she refused to believe it.

She knew there was more to her brother’s death than suicide.

And Lucas McGowan was going to help her figure it out.