While I was on vacation with my cousins, my phone lit up with one message: “Get on a plane home. Don’t tell your parents you’re coming.” When I landed, an attorney and two investigators

had spent the morning acting like we were children again—barefoot in the sand, sunscreen smeared across our noses, laughing far too loudly over shaved ice and terrible vacation pictures. I was twenty-three, old enough to pay rent for my own place in Seattle, but still young enough that one week with my cousins felt like escaping my actual life.

My phone continue reading …