Page 244 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

“Because it was partial.”

“Because I wanted it to mean something, and everyone told me it didn’t.”

Including me.

Bryce had been reckless, arrogant, impossible to manage half the time, but he had also been one of us.

I spent years treating the inconsistencies as grief, looking for somewhere to land because the alternative was uglier than anything I knew how to survive.

He absorbs that.

The old frustration is still there. Not toward him, exactly. Toward everyone who told me grief was making me see patterns. Toward the investigators who relied on processed logs. Toward myself for eventually letting the question go.

Jeffrey studies the log. “Can we trace the key?”

The legacy authentication structure predates half our current security architecture,” I say. “Back then we weren’t building for forensic isolation. We were building to keep prototypes alive long enough to function.”

Jeffrey grimaces. “Meaning?”

“Meaning whoever used it understood exactly how invisible old systems could become.”

“What about old backups?”

“I’ve requested cold storage retrieval.”

“Without alerting IT too widely?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

He looks at the screen again. “If Bryce accessed that aircraft, altered the failsafe, and then masked the log…”

“He caused the crash.”

“Maybe unintentionally.”

I look at him.

He lifts a hand. “I’m not defending him. I’m saying motive matters. Did he intend to kill Megan? Or did he intend to create a system failure that proved a point?”

The distinction is legally relevant.

Morally less so.

“If he removed a failsafe from an aircraft stabilization system,” I say, “intent becomes a narrower comfort than people pretend.”

Jeffrey nods. “Agreed.”

I turn back to the monitors. “What did he want?”

Jeffrey leans against the table. “Back then?”

“Yes.”

“Recognition. Money. A bigger role. Half the time he acted like he wanted out, the other half like he wanted us to beg him to stay.”

I remember.