My six-year-old nephew dragged his broken leg across seven blocks of pavement to reach my porch, with his starving three-year-old sister clinging to his shirt.

Mateo had shared a delivery route with Aaron for the better part of a year. Over burnt coffee at Peter’s kitchen counter, he laid out details he had dismissed at the time because men like him were good at mistaking trouble for stress.

Aaron had started keeping a duffel bag in his truck with children’s clothes, granola bars, and copies of birth certificates. He had asked Mateo whether studio apartments would rent month to month. Twice he showed up to work with bruises on his forearm and once with a red mark across his chest from “getting between Reena and Drew.”

“He said she locked the boy downstairs to ‘teach him manners,’” Mateo said. “I told him that was insane. He said he was figuring something out.”

Peter pressed his thumb into the edge of the counter until it hurt. “Why didn’t he call me?”

Mateo’s face tightened. “He said he had. Said you were angry about money and didn’t want to get pulled into his mess.”

Peter thought of the only real fight he and Aaron had ever had: a year before Aaron died, when Peter refused to cosign a refinancing loan Reena wanted. Aaron had hung up on him after that. They were cooler afterward, but not broken. At least Peter had not thought so.

“He also asked me,” Mateo said quietly, “what happens if a kid tells a teacher something and the teacher calls CPS. He looked terrified.”

By the time Mateo left, Peter had more than suspicion. He had a pattern: isolation, hunger, punishment, a father trying to move his children, and a lie planted between brothers.

The next morning Peter met with a family-law attorney recommended by Marisol.