Mia was arrested. Specifically, she was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, plus the additional charges of leaving the scene of an accident and — this is the part that would later matter most — providing false information to a peace officer. She was booked. She was put in a holding cell. She was told, as is standard, that she could make one phone call. She did not call me. She did not call her mother. She did not call her sister. She called, of all people, her ex-husband Peter, who she had not spoken to in two years.

Peter, a decent man who had been deeply relieved when that divorce ended, heard her out, declined to help her, and — this is the part I learned much later — drove straight to the police station after the call and told the duty officer that Mia was almost certainly lying about her friend having been the driver, because he had known Mia for eight years and this was, as he told the officer, "her pattern." Peter did not have to do that. He did it anyway. Which is why, when the police officer rang my doorbell at 8:14 AM, the officer already had a suspicion Mia's story wasn't true. He was confirming, gently, that Peter had been right.