Ruth appointed herself minister of small joys. She arrived with board games, with bad reality television, with a plan to repaint Isaiah's bedroom a blue he chose himself. On the Saturday they painted, Isaiah's laughter returned in flashes—when Ruth got paint in her hair, when Jordan slipped on a drop cloth, when Naomi's carefully taped edge failed and she swore in a way that made Isaiah cover his mouth and then uncover it to laugh properly. That night, amid the smell of latex and open windows, Isaiah said, "I forget sometimes. And then I remember. And forgetting feels like betrayal, and remembering feels like drowning, and I don't know which one I'm supposed to pick."
Naomi set down the roller. "You don't pick. They take turns. Your only job is to stay in the room with yourself while they do."
He nodded, paint-smudged and serious. "Are you in the room with yourself?"
The question undid her more than tears would have. "I'm trying," she said. "You make me want to try."
The investigation's slow machinery produced paper the way trees produce leaves—inevitably, seasonally, without regard for the person standing underneath waiting for shelter. Naomi organized a binder. Tabs for timelines, medical notes, witness statements, emails, policy excerpts. She labeled it MILLBROOK / REED in block letters and kept it in a locked drawer because Isaiah's life was not a coffee-table book. When Carl Nguyen called with updates that were not updates, she logged the calls. When Kellerman's secretary offered a "listening session," Naomi asked for an agenda and a notetaker and watched the offer shrink.
Briggs, during those weeks, taught as if scrutiny were an insult he could outwork. Parents in the lobby praised his concerts. A petition appeared online supporting him—"Don't Destroy a Career Over a Misunderstanding"—and gathered signatures from people who had not been in the room. Naomi did not engage the petition. Marta advised against it. "Starve the spectacle," Marta said. "Feed the record."