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Connor tells me I don’t have to go to dinner. Everyone will understand. But I have to. I have to be able to look into their faces. I dress in the clothes Connor bought me—wool trousers, a cowl-neck sweater in sage green, the same red coat, hastily washed, because I don’t have another.

Olena takes my jacket. Irina walks us to the dining room. The doors open and faces turn toward us. Rose rises from her seat. “Theo, shouldn’t you be resting?” she asks. Is that only concern in her voice, or is there displeasure, too?

“I’d rather have some company,” I say. Connor pulls my seat out for me; I lower myself into it. My left arm is bulky with the bandage underneath, and it twinges every time I move.

Louise and Magnus exchange a glance. It’s not the only one being traded down the table. Trevor sits back with a smile, a glass of sparkling water in hand.

“Glad to see Connor’s attempt to get out of the wedding wasn’t a success,” he says.

“Trevor,” Alexis chides.

“What? I’m just glad I’m not the only Dalton who almost killed someone,” Trevor tosses off.

“Shut the fuck up, Trevor,” Alexis snaps.

“Lex,” Paloma says, looking pointedly at Sebastian. “Please.”

“That’s enough of that kind of talk,” Magnus cuts in. He shakes out his napkin. “We’re glad you could join us, Theo.”

Connor’s hand rests on my back, between my shoulder blades. “Well, it’s going to be our last dinner here, so we wanted to make sure to at least stop by,” he says.

Louise’s eyebrows raise. Alexis gives a twitch of surprise.

“Your last dinner?” Rose says, with the air of someone trying not to fret. “You’re leaving?”

“I think if I stick around any longer, I might lose an arm next,” I say, trying for humor. Instead it sounds like prophecy.

“You’ll miss Christmas,” Alexis says. “We’ve literally never missed a Christmas together.”

I wish I could shrug Connor’s hand from my back without being obvious. I’d thought we weren’t going to make a big announcement. I wanted to leave quietly. Explain things when it was already too late to argue.

“Are you seriously surprised she wants to run?” Trevor asks.

“It’s perfectly reasonable, after what happened,” Paloma says.

“Perfectly,” Magnus agrees, voice neutral. He raises his glass in my direction. “I’m sorry that the mountain treated you poorly. I hope when you’ve recovered, you’ll give it another chance.”

The wrapping paper was in Magnus’s room. This is what Magnus wanted. Me, leaving. But not with Connor.

Nick says nothing, but stares at me. A needle of cold goes through me, and I hear the rush of my own blood in my ears. Nick’s gaze doesn’t relent. He holds his glass, a single drop of red wine balanced at the rim, but doesn’t drink.

He knows me. He didn’t before, I think. But now he’s seen.

“Theo?” Connor is saying, and I startle. Irina has already arrived with the first course; I’ve been drifting.

“Yes, thank you,” I say, not sure what was being asked, but it appears to be the right answer as Irina adds a generous helping of Parmesan to the top of my salad. Thick, dark slices of beet are arranged on top. They’re cold against my teeth and taste faintly of rich soil. When I dab my lips on the white napkin it comes away with pink stains. Sebastian has made a mess of his hands with them, setting Paloma tutting.

No one talks. They all pretend to focus on their food.

“Theo,” Connor says softly. “Are you okay?”

I flinch. Now everyone is looking at me again. This was a mistake. I should have hidden away in the cabin like Connor told me to.

“You know, I’m actually feeling a bit tired,” I say. “I think I’m going to turn in for the night. I’m sorry to bail.”

“It’s quite all right,” Rose assures me, and Alexis and Paloma murmur agreement.

“I’ll come with you,” Connor says. I almost let him. But then I smile, shake my head.

“No, you stay. Enjoy your time with your family,” I say.

He makes another protest, but then he lets me go. As soon as the doors are closed behind me, I start to shake.

I don’t want to wait until morning. I want to get out of here now .

But I have another twelve hours in this place, and so I need to think. Be strategic. They’re all in there, which means they aren’t out here. They aren’t watching me. This might be my last—my only—chance to look around unobserved.

Run , my mother’s voice tells me, and I am trying to listen to her warnings, but I only just learned her name, and there is so much more than that I need.

I head out, grabbing my coat as I go.

The cloud cover blankets the sky and chokes out the light of stars, but there are the beaming lights of the lodge to glance off the snow and illuminate my way.

Wildflower is tucked out of sight of the lodge. I don’t have to worry about anyone glancing out those big picture windows and seeing me.

If it’s locked, I’m skunked. My curious habits never extended to breaking and entering; a simple dead bolt is more than enough to put an end to my snooping career. But Trevor is in and out of here all the time, and he has a careless nature. Impulsive.

The door is unlocked. I slip inside, intruder and thief, and mindful of how easily light shines between the trees, I leave them off and use my flashlight instead. I haven’t been inside this cabin before. It’s homier than the others. Framed pictures of flowers and birds on the walls; a rug with a pattern of roses; quilts instead of expensive white wool blankets folded on the back of the couch. Someone has gone to deliberate effort to preserve the past here.

I start with Trevor’s room. Like his sister, he hasn’t unpacked. Unlike her, he’s flung his clothes around the room with abandon. I move swiftly, atrophied skills coming back to me. I open drawers. Slide my fingers along the tops and bottoms to check for things hidden. Peer inside shoes. Dip my hands into the pockets of coats and pants. I find condoms. An empty baggie with a few white grains sticking to it—predictable. A bottle of vodka, surprisingly full. Trevor might not be as clean and sober as he insists, but he isn’t wasted, either.

The things he’s done, he’s done clear-eyed, I think. Is that worse?

His phone is on top of the dresser. It unlocks with his mother’s birthday—how sweet. His texts are full of him wheedling racy pictures from an impressive array of young women. They arch their backs and pile their hair on top of their heads and pout their lips. At least he’s not a dick-pic guy; his selfies are of the shirtless variety, nothing below the belt.

I’m about to set the phone aside as uninteresting when I see a message a few months old.

I’m so sorry , it reads. I know I’m not supposed to be talking to you. But for what it’s worth, if it’s worth anything, I wish it had been me. If you want to take the money, do it, but if you don’t, I’ll

It ends there. It’s a draft. Never sent. The number is saved under Kayla .

The girl he hurt. So Trevor felt contrite. Or he was playing an angle. And apparently decided against pursuing it, either way.

I doubt Trevor will notice anything out of place in this mess, but still I rearrange it all to my mental snapshot before I cut through the living room to the other bedroom. Here I hesitate. Rose hasn’t been warm to me, but Connor loves her. I wanted to love her, too.

Entering her room is a violation; there is no way around it. I push inward against good sense and morals and I invade her sanctum. Everything I touch, I imagine stained—my fingerprints on the pill case that rests on the dresser, the oils of my hands on the temples of the reading glasses at the bedside.

There is nothing to find. No damning photographs; no convenient diary detailing a campaign against me or laying out what happened years ago. There are only the things you bring on a vacation like this. The only photograph is the one on the wall: Connor, Trevor, and Alexis in the middle, young and smiling, the too-bright light of summer making them squint. On one side of them stands Rose—only a few gray hairs, the faintest wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. On the other side, Nick has his arm around Alexis’s shoulder. He’s beaming; so is she.

No photos of Liam. There was one in the main room of the cabin, but here in her private space she is allowed to cut him away from herself. She’s allowed to be angry.

Angry people do unpredictable things. We all have violence inside of us. It needs only the right fuel.

I retreat. There’s nothing to find here.

I could go to Nick’s cabin next, but I think of the photographs in Alexis’s bag. They’re proof that something happened to my mother. I can’t leave them behind.

The path to Red Fox, recently cleared, has begun to fill up again. Powder spills from the shoulders of my coat as I walk. I catch a snowflake on my tongue, and a memory comes to me—arms outflung, spinning, the sensation of my momentum pulling at my in all directions like I might fly apart as I tipped my face up to the falling snow.

I reach the cabin. I never gave Olena’s key back to Alexis; it’s still in my pocket. Half of me expects the key not to work this time, but of course it does, and then I am standing in the interior where embers still smolder in the woodstove and Sebastian’s stuffed animals are strewn around the room like a great zoo breakout.

I head straight into the bedroom, to Alexis’s suitcase. For an instant I think the photographs are gone and panic closes my throat, but then I claw aside her clothes and find the envelope jammed in the bottom, a halfhearted attempt to hide it better.

There she is—Mallory. My mother. Not the girl from Trevor’s accident after all, and I can’t believe I ever thought she might be. There are darker marks inside the shape of the bruise on the small of her back: knuckles. That bruise on her shoulder—not a seat belt, but a palm, a stretched-out thumb, digging in. Her face untouched, because it wouldn’t do to leave marks where they could be seen.

Liam Dalton had a temper. He never hurt his own flesh and blood, no, and never touched the respectable girl he married, the one who could stand up to him and his family, but Mallory Cahill, the girl from nowhere at all, she was fair game.

She looks frightened. And she looks resigned. Why did you take these photos, Mallory? Did you think they might save you? Did you plan to run?

Did you try?

I can see her. Honey-brown hair. Hand clapped against the side of her neck, trying in vain to stop the blood. She reaches out as if to grab me but pushes me away again.

Hide.

My memories swirl around each other in impossible combinations, tainted and warped by the images from my dreams. I can’t be sure of them. I try to reorient myself, stick to what I know.

Alexis has photos of my mother. Her father was having an affair with my mother. My mother was beaten.

Alexis was fifteen years old when her father died. Just a kid, really. Could she have known about Mallory? About what her father was doing? Maybe not.

The sound of a key scraping in a lock startles me. I jump to my feet, the photographs clutched in my hands. There’s nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide, unless I want to try to shove my way under the bed and get found in an even more compromising position than I already am. Indecision paralyzes me, and so I’m standing there, clearly visible in the doorway, when Paloma enters.

She freezes, keys in hand, her face flushed. “What the fuck are you doing?” she demands.

“I—I can explain,” I say, which is what you say when you have no idea how to explain yourself.

She says something rapidly under her breath and strides forward. “You had better start, then,” she says. She’s holding the key in her fist like a weapon. Her eyes are red-rimmed; she’s been crying. “What are those?” she demands.

I hold them out, opting for honesty—it’s not like I have a better idea. “I found them earlier, when I was looking for Sebastian’s book,” I say.

She takes them from me slowly, stares at them. “What the fuck are these?” she says. She swears with the condensed intensity of someone who does not get many chances to do it.

“Do you know who she is?” I ask.

“No,” she says, voice clipped. “What are you doing, digging around for dirt on the family?”

“No. Not exactly,” I say. “I’m just trying to figure some things out.”

She snorts. She walks over to the kitchen, tossing the photographs onto the table, and opens a cabinet. She takes down a glass and a bottle of whiskey, pouring herself a sloppy portion.

I hesitate. “I talked to Alexis, about the ornament.”

“She mentioned.”

“You already knew, she said.”

“Trevor’s a pretty shitty blackmailer. Or he would be, if the point was to get anything out of it, not just piss us all off.” She puts a hand to her forehead. “I’m so tired of pretending like all this is normal. Like having this many fucking secrets is anything but diseased.” She looks at me over the rim of her drink. “Do you know who that is, in the pictures?”

“Her name was Mallory Cahill,” I tell her. “She was… involved. With Liam Dalton.”

Her eyes widen. “That’s her?” she says.

“You know about her?”

“Everyone knows,” she says. “I mean, everyone in the family.” She walks back over, picks them up. “God. He did this to her?”

“I don’t know. Do you have any idea what Alexis would be doing with these?”

Paloma blows out a breath. “No. But… she’s been helping her mom clear some things out of the old house. Maybe she found them there?” She sets them down. “Did Connor tell you about her?”

“No. Trevor,” I say.

“Shit-stirrer,” she notes. She crosses her arms. “I cannot tell you how much I hate that man.”

“Trevor?”

“Liam,” she says. My eyebrows go up. “It’s not my best quality. I know I shouldn’t, given the way—but it destroyed her, you know? She was my best friend. I saw what it did to her. She almost didn’t survive it herself.”

“He killed himself, didn’t he?” I say, and now she does look shocked.

“Alexis said that?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Fuck.” She takes a drink, then tips it toward me. “Want some?”

I shouldn’t. But I nod. She marches back over, discovers there are no more clean glasses, and pours a measure into a mug decorated with mistletoe. “Happy holidays. Anyway. Yes. But I’m surprised Alexis told you. I don’t think she’s told anyone but me.”

“How does she know?” I ask.

She leans back against the counter. “He talked to her. Right before it happened. So when she found out he was dead, she guessed. But they told her not to say anything. Secrets and the Daltons, you know how it is.”

“Who told her? Rose?”

She shakes her head. “The old man, probably. He was the one who came up after Mr. Vance found the body. All I know for sure is that Alexis was sworn to secrecy. Rose and Connor have no idea. Trevor either, obviously. It’s messed up. They deserve to know. But it’s not my place.” She gives me a look that makes it very clear that she doesn’t think it’s my place, either.

Alexis was fifteen years old. Fifteen and her father killed himself and she couldn’t tell a soul. It’s monstrous.

“She blames herself, you know,” Paloma says. “She thinks she should have known, figured out what to say. And instead of talking about it and fucking dealing with it, she did what she was told and she’s kept it secret all this time, no matter how much it hurts her. That’s what you’re getting into, Theo. And I swear, most of the time I think it’s worth it, but sometimes…” She swigs the rest of her drink. Slams it down. “Sometimes I wish I could go back and tell myself to fucking run.”