I should have ignored the message.

It arrived on a Thursday night from a number I didn’t have saved:

This is Roman. Marcus’s brother. We need to talk about what he left at your place. I’ll be there in twenty.

Marcus and I had been broken up for three months. The split had been ugly enough that I stopped answering his calls. I had boxed the few things he left—charger, hoodie, a paperback he never finished—and shoved them in the hall closet. I never expected his older brother to come collect them.

Roman Hale was thirty-six to Marcus’s twenty-eight. I had met him twice at family dinners while Marcus and...