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I walk as quickly as I can in the direction of the cars, scuttling around the south end of the lake to get to the road. Soon enough I have the gate in view, and then I’m over it, not breaking stride until I reach the same spot where that first bit of signal appeared like a fern frond poking up out of late spring snow.

When I left White Pine, I made sure to slip the phone I found in Magnus’s office into my pocket. I’m still wearing the same red coat, despite the slit in the arm, despite the blood. I don’t have a second one.

I take the phone out. I can’t access its contents, but maybe I don’t need to. I take out my own phone. Open the messages.

Stay away from Connor Dalton.

Maybe I should have listened.

I press the button to call the sender. I wait and wait—and then the flip phone lights up. Incoming call.

I end it quickly. Magnus is the one sending the messages. I wrote him off as an old-school guy, but of course he’s tech-savvy. He runs multiple companies, deals with big international deals, and he’s not a figurehead or a hands-off kind of manager. And the gift? A dramatic gesture, to be sure. And also a way to drive home a sense that someone here wanted me gone.

I still have my phone in my hand. Seizing onto the thin thread of signal, it offers up my notifications faithfully. Three missed calls from Harper.

Two from that unknown number. Joseph.

I’m about to swipe the notifications away, but at that moment, the screen lights up, and it begins to buzz. Joseph is calling again.

I freeze in indecision as it rings once, twice. I never wanted to talk to him again. The thought of hearing his voice makes me shake. But Joseph might have answers. He might remember things that I didn’t know to ask about, before now.

I accept the call.

“Hello?” I say. My voice shakes, despite my best efforts. I decide to blame the cold.

“Dora, I didn’t think you’d answer,” Joseph says, and he sounds exactly the same as he did eight years ago.

“My name is Theo.”

“Theo, then,” he says. I was wrong. He sounds older. “Theo—it’s so grown-up.”

“Don’t,” I say. I shut my eyes. I’m not grown up. I’m shrinking inside myself with every word he says. Becoming the girl who wept and begged and pleaded with him to help her. “You said we need to talk. So talk.”

“Dora—Theo—I’m sorry for what happened. You have no idea how often I’ve wished I could go back to that moment,” Joseph says.

I give a choked laugh. “Yeah, it didn’t turn out too well for you.”

“That’s not what I mean. I pretty much got what I deserved,” he says. He sounds genuine. I think of the last time I saw him, soaked in blood, the knife on the ground between us. The way he looked at me, like I was a wild animal, like someone ought to put me down. Maybe he wasn’t wrong.

“I don’t want to talk about what happened,” I say in a deadened voice. “But someone has been talking. About the things we all agreed we wouldn’t.” It feels like swallowing down something rancid, using that word: we . Like I’m making myself one of them, the way I used to be— the way I never was.

“I know,” Joseph says. “I’m sorry, Dora.”

“It’s Theo,” I snap. “I always hated that name.”

“Theo,” he repeats, like he’s reminding himself, training himself into it. He doesn’t need to. We won’t speak to each other again. “You know why they gave you that name?”

“Because I was a gift from God,” I say bitterly.

“It’s because it’s the only thing you would say. ‘Teddy.’ It was the only word you spoke for the first solid month. So: Theodora.” He says it like it’s sweet. Like he has no idea there might be something terrible wrapped inside that story. “Things have changed, you know. For me. Beth and I—we split. Not long after you left. I’m living in Colorado now. I’m actually getting married, next year.”

“Felicitations,” I say flatly.

“Bradley’s great. I think you’d like him,” Joseph says. My stomach gives a flip.

“You…” I try to fit this piece of information into my recollections. Joseph and Beth. The way they never touched. The way she said so many times how she saved him. How his sister would purse her lips and shake her head whenever she mentioned her brother’s religious turn. Those moments when Beth would spit out blame at him for her infertility, in her lowest moments, true acid and hatred in her voice.

“You don’t need to say anything,” Joseph continues. “It doesn’t make up for what I did. What I didn’t do. I was supposed to take care of you. But I was too afraid. Of a lot of things. God-fearing, that’s what we’re supposed to be, right? But I’ll tell you. I’ve only ever felt God since I stopped being afraid.”

“Then I’m happy for you,” I say. I’m surprised to discover it’s even true. I can’t forgive him. But I can be glad that he found his way to being someone new.

“That’s not really why I called.” Joseph clears his throat. In that sound I can hear the fracturing of hope. He must have known this wouldn’t be some joyous reunion, a mending of all our wounds, but some part of us always holds on to those fantasies. This will be the day they finally love me. This will be the day I am finally good enough.

“Someone contacted you, didn’t they? About me. About what happened.”

“Yes,” Joseph says.

“And what did you tell them?”

“I wasn’t going to tell them anything,” Joseph says. “But I’m not the only one they called. I guess some folks figure it’s been enough time. Chief Monroe retired; he’s down in Boca Raton now. His threats don’t carry so much weight anymore.”

“I hadn’t heard.” There was a time I’d fantasized about Chief Monroe taking me in, adopting me. But his interest in me extended only as far as getting me the hell out of there. It saved my life. I couldn’t have asked for more, not really.

But the heart hopes.

“This guy, he already knew most of it, only it was all the worst version.”

“The version Beth would tell, you mean,” I say. Or Peter.

A grunt. “That’s the one. So I… I sent him those photos. So he’d see. So he’d know why you did it. I told him I didn’t blame you. Because I don’t. I deserve these scars. Every inch of them.”

My breath is labored. The cold air makes my eyes water, but there are no tears, not now. “Do you know who it was?” I ask. My voice is so calm. I don’t understand how it can be so calm. “The person asking, I mean.”

“There was more than one,” Joseph tells me. “First time it was a guy who wouldn’t give me his name. Frankly, he seemed like a dumbass. Second time it was a private investigator. I looked him up—it seemed like a real slick firm. What kind of people are you tangling with, D—Theo?”

“It’s not important,” I say. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

“The thing is…” He pauses. I can hear the sound of his weight shifting, a chair creaking. I wonder what the stars look like in Colorado right now, whether he’s far enough outside the city to see them spread out overhead. Here, there’s nothing but the dark blanket of clouds. “That second time around, they weren’t just asking about what happened. They were asking about where we got you from. About if you’d told us anything, about before.”

I watch the path of a single snowflake as it drifts down inches from my face. “And what did you tell them?”

“Nothing,” Joseph says, voice gruff. “It’s no one’s business but yours.”

“But there was something to tell.”

The silence is a long one. I wait. “You didn’t talk much, back then,” he begins at last. “For the longest time, you’d say only that one word. Teddy . Bought you a million teddy bears, too, but you always just shoved them away, shook your head like they were wrong.”

Because the right one was here all the while, with its soft brown fur and red ribbon. I shut my eyes.

“But then you started talking, little by little. Just at night, when I would read you stories. You’d snuggle up in the crook of my arm. It was the one time you were ever calm. And one night out of nowhere you told me a story. You said that you used to live in a castle on a mountain. I asked if that made you a princess, and you said no, the princess was dead. You said that a terrible ogre had come to the mountain. You told me…” He takes a deep breath. “You told me that you knew what it felt like to be dead. That it was very, very cold. But you weren’t alone, because the princess was there with you. You woke up. She didn’t. And then the fairies took you away to find a new family.”

“Where did I come from, Joseph?” I ask. “You always said someone in the church…”

“That was a lie,” Joseph tells me, and I wish I was surprised. “Or, not entirely. Someone in the church did approach us. They knew we’d been trying, and we were getting desperate. He said that there was a kid who needed a family, but it wasn’t… official. He said we’d have to do it quietly. And there’d be some money. We didn’t ask questions. We were just grateful to have you. But I always knew there was something wrong about it.”

“Wrong about me, you mean.”

“It was never anything wrong with you. You were traumatized. I know that now. Hell, I knew it then, but I thought that loving you would be enough.”

“Maybe it would have been, if you were better at it,” I say, and the bitterness oozes through my words.

“Theo, I—” Joseph begins.

I end the call. And then I block his number. Tears drag tracks down my cheeks. I don’t want his apology. It won’t do any good, not now.

A princess in a castle. An ogre. It makes as much sense as the rest.

I can almost see it. I can almost hear her voice. I sink down into the snow, wrapping my arms around my knees. I stare out down the silvery road as snow falls. It is eerily silent. I cannot even hear myself.

Mallory Cahill. No, Mama . I picture the woman in the photos, the bruises on her body, and for an instant she’s there.

Mama. Her back bare. Her head turned to look over her shoulder. I can just see her through the crack in the door.

I’m not supposed to go in.

The numbing cold bites through my clothes. I should be shivering, but I’m not. My body is gone; all sound is gone, and there is only the eerie pale unlight of the snow and the night, and in this space I don’t exist; here doesn’t exist. The warmth and the light are all gone, and I follow it back, and there she is.

The girl watches her mother piling clothes in a suitcase. “Are we going on a trip?”

“For a little while.”

The girl traces shapes in the condensation of the car window. Her mother adjusts the rearview mirror to look at her, smiles. The girl smiles, too, but she feels like crying. Outside the window, snow begins to fall.

The girl spins and laughs, topples into the snow. She pops back up again, eager for the approval of her audience. The boy rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. She’s pleased. She wants to impress him. She thinks they’ll always be friends.

She looks up into the face of the antlered man, and she screams, but she’s frozen in place, and he grabs her by the arm—

The snow is still falling. It comes thick and fast and it covers her. She burrows beneath it like a blanket. She was so cold before, but now she’s beginning to feel warm again. She thinks she would like to sleep now.

The sun has vanished. She can’t feel her feet or her right hand, though she knows it’s there because it’s resting on top of the snow right in front of her nose.

Clouds cover the sky. Occlude the moon. But there’s one star still shining in the night. Sometimes it’s amber, and sometimes it glows a duller red. It moves from time to time. She thought at first it was a wishing star, but she has been wishing for one thing and it hasn’t come.

Help.

She tries to say it, but her voice doesn’t work. The star flares. It illuminates a face, the dark shine of eyes that watch her with patient disinterest.

She’s not so cold anymore, she thinks. She feels very warm now. She shuts her eyes. Maybe help came after all, and her mother has bundled her up in a blanket in front of the fire, and soon she will tell her a story about the princesses in the forest and all the places that they will go next.

The memories shiver. In the dark they are almost physical things. I could reach out and touch them.

“You look so cold,” my mother says. She crouches down in front of me, wraps a red scarf around my neck. Her smile is warm and unafraid. “What are you doing out here, Teddy?”

“Looking for you,” I whisper. I blink my eyes. They feel gummy. My limbs are heavy. “Mama?”

I’m alone. I’m alone and my mother is dead, has been dead for years, and I am here and now, and she isn’t. How long have I been out here? Too long, sitting here with the snow piling up around me.

I don’t know how much of the memory is real. It’s scraps, fragments. I’m drawing lines between them, around them. Making a story. And I can’t tell anymore what’s my invention and what is truth. Maybe I never could.

I have to move. I don’t want to. Here, where my body ceases to be real, my memories have room to blossom. The cold and the memory—they are linked. As if I left them behind in the cold, and I’ve returned for them.

Rowan , my mother’s voice says, tight with fear. I want to stay with her. I want to remember.

I know what it feels like to be dead. It’s cold, so cold.

The answers are there. In the cold. In the dark. If I stay, I’ll find them. If I stay, I’ll never leave.

I push to my feet shakily, almost fall. My feet have gone completely numb; so have my hands, my face. I crook my fingers. They’re slow to bend.

You have to run. You have to hide. I was so good at hiding. But he found me, didn’t he? The man with antlers. Liam Dalton. The ogre.

Movement begins to warm me. I shove my hands under my armpits to try to hoard my body heat. My footsteps are muted. The story pieces itself together in my mind.

Liam brought us here. I don’t know what promises he lured her with—money, safety, love—but she followed. Then things turned sour, once she was isolated and alone. So we had to flee.

But he must have found out she was going to leave him. He returned. He was angry. He hurt her.

Killed her.

And then—?

Maybe he realized what he’d done, and the guilt overcame him. One way or another, he killed himself.

And where does that leave me?

I was a witness. A loose end. A threat to the story the Daltons would tell.

It’s here. In the cold. All of it. The pieces of me that have been frozen in winter’s ice all this time and are thawing now.

The red scarf— blood, drying dark —the bitter cold, the star glow ing red— amber, the end of a cigarette —the antlered man with his face half-black— there you are —and we have to go, love, we have to go now.

Pieces. They don’t connect up. It’s a kind of madness, trying to lay them out in the proper order, find the lines between them.

I reach the top of the road. My heart is racing so quick I can barely feel the space between each beat. The windows of the lodge are lit up. The Christmas tree shines, red lights and green and white. A figure stands near the window. From this far, I can’t tell who it is.

I hold still, afraid that even at this distance, they might spot me. I don’t know what time it is. I’m afraid to get my phone out to check, in case the light is visible. I know I’ve been gone a long while.

A sound splits the silence of the night—muffled, distant. It sounds like a bird, or maybe a rabbit caught in a predator’s teeth. The person at the window seems to turn toward it as well, but the curtain of quiet falls again quickly. The figure turns away and begins to walk out of the room, and I recognize the gait—Louise Dalton.

I strain my ears for the sound to come again, but it doesn’t. My teeth are chattering. I see the light of White Pine up ahead. It doesn’t feel safe to go inside. I can’t stay out here.

I walk to the door. My hand fumbles with the knob, and then the door opens and Connor is standing there, staring at me. His eyes travel up and down my body, and he lets out a breath between his teeth.

He reaches out, pulling me inside, wordless. My hands are too numb to strip off my snow-packed gloves, get off my boots, and so he does it for me. As if I’m a child.

He wraps me in a blanket and guides me over to the end of the couch nearest the woodstove, which gives off a wall of heat. I shrink back from it; it makes my skin hurt. He wraps his hands around mine, breathing on them to warn them.

“What were you doing out there?” he asks.

“I went to where I could get a signal.”

“Who did you call?”

“Magnus,” I say, my lips twisting mirthlessly, but he only looks confused. “I’ve been getting text messages, telling me to stay away from you. I found a phone in Magnus’s office and I went to try the number. The texts came from him.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Connor says. “Why would he do that? It was probably Trevor. Being an ass, like always.”

He’s still rubbing my hands between his. They prickle, pins and needles as feeling returns.

“I saw a photo of you,” he says, without looking up. “I was at Harper’s show. We’d never met—it was a friend-of-a-friend thing. I was on a date, actually.” He gives a low laugh. “A bad one. I saw the photo of you, and I saw the tattoo. It reminded me of the other cabin—Dragonfly. Dad picked the name for it, you know. He bought the ornament for the door. It reminded me of him. It made me think of…” He lets out a breath and bends his head over my hands, resting his brow against my knuckles. Then he looks up, meeting my eyes. “I don’t really know how to describe it. The way things were when he died, they were… complicated. I’ve never been able to be angry with him like everyone else was. When I saw that photo, saw the tattoo—saw you—I felt like it was somehow a sign. That’s why I asked Harper to introduce us.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you pretend to be her friend?” I ask.

He makes a sound of dark amusement. “Because I didn’t think ‘Hey, you make me think about my cheating dad and I find that weirdly compelling’ was a great pickup line.”

I choke. “Yeah, I can see that,” I allow.

“I told myself it was fate. Which I guess is a fancy way of saying a coincidence with staying power,” he says. He rises, moving to sit next to me on the couch. He settles so that he’s not quite touching me, both of us facing in the same direction. “I’m sorry. I should have told you right away. I shouldn’t have lied.”

I look over at him. His face is open and vulnerable, those blue eyes bright. But a confession doesn’t mean much when you’ve already been caught.

“Those photos. In Alexis’s room,” I say. “You said they were of Kayla.”

He doesn’t answer, guilt flashing briefly over his features. I unzip my coat. The photo I stole is still there, pressed against my body, its edges curved by the shape of my ribs. I set it on the coffee table between us, and his fingertips graze the edge.

“That’s not Kayla,” I say. “It’s Mallory Cahill.”

“How do you know that?” he asks, his voice rough. “How do you know her name?”

“Did your father do that to her?” I ask.

His breath hisses between his teeth. “No. He wouldn’t.”

“Then why—”

“Alexis found them at the house. In some of Dad’s old things,” Connor says. “She wanted to know the same thing. Did I think Dad did it. But he wouldn’t.”

“Is he really the person you thought you knew? He stashed a woman here,” I point out. “Did he ever hit your mother? Or you?” I ask.

His head whips toward me, fury in his eyes. “No. Never,” he says. “And he wouldn’t have hurt Mallory, either.”

“Then where did those photos come from?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I have no idea. He was cheating on my mother, okay. That’s awful. But he wasn’t violent.”

“Okay,” I say quietly, relenting. He looks back at the photograph. He picks it up, eyes lingering on each bruise.

“I met her once, you know,” he says. “Mallory. My father drove me up here. He didn’t tell me—he just said she was a friend. I mostly remember the little girl. We were almost the same age. Spent the afternoon playing together. It was a fun day.”

“Same age?” I echo.

“I mean, not really. I was seven. She was five,” he says.

“Are you sure?”

He gives me an odd look. “Yeah, actually. You know kids at that age. They make a big deal out of it. She found out my birthday was exactly a week before hers, so she kept telling me, like, ‘When you’re twelve, I’ll be ten. When you’re seventeen, I’ll be fifteen.’ And she’d make up the things we’d do together. It was actually… really sweet.”

Two years and one week. And all of a sudden, I know my birthday. I’m a year older than I thought. I sit back in the chair. Connor is still watching me.

“I don’t think he planned to bring me up there,” he says. There’s a touch of defensiveness in his voice. “Mom was sick. He got stuck with me for the day unexpectedly. I had no idea why they were here.”

The feeling of spinning comes back to me, the touch of snowflakes on my tongue. The boy who laughed and grabbed my hand, pulling me along. Let’s go.

The image morphs. The antlered man, hand on my wrist, those same words echoing, anger in his voice—or—

“Theo?” Connor reaches up. I flinch, but he only presses the pad of his thumb to my face, wiping away a tear. He looks at me, a line between his brows. “He was a good man, you know. He was always so patient with us. Gentle. He never even raised his voice, and he taught me to help people. He said that’s the point of being in the world. To help each other. He wouldn’t have done that.”

“Then who did?” I ask, but Connor is staring at me, doesn’t seem to hear. His lips part.

I reach for him. “Connor—”

“Oh my god,” he says. “Teddy. Her name was Teddy.” He stands up abruptly, hand over his mouth, and my hand falls back to my lap. He looks at the photo on the table, then back to me. I sit with my elbows on my thighs, body pinched together.

“I didn’t know,” I say.

“It’s true?” He has one hand on his hip, the other running through his hair, a look of utter bewilderment on his face. “You’re her. How—but—did you arrange this whole thing?”

“How could I? You’re the one who tracked me down, remember?” I point out.

“You said I looked familiar. The day we met, you said you thought you knew me. Because—”

“Because we’d met before,” I tell him. My voice cracks. “And because you look so much like your father.”

He shakes his head. “But you had to have known who I was. You must have—wait. You said you were adopted when you were four. That doesn’t make sense.”

“I was small for my age. They were guessing. Connor, I didn’t remember anything about my life before the Scotts until I came here with you. I didn’t remember you or your father or my own fucking name. Rowan Cahill. My mother called me Teddy. And I was here.”

I was here. It was real. I came from somewhere, and I was someone.

There are tears running down my face. Useless things, but I can’t stop them. I scrub at my cheeks with the heels of my hands, and the bandage still wrapping my palm scrapes my skin.

Connor watches me, silent. Then he sits slowly, lowering himself to the edge of the coffee table. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, gaze to the side. “Explain it to me,” he says. He looks directly at me. Anger simmers behind his eyes.

No, not anger.

Fear.

“I know only bits and pieces,” I say slowly, deliberately. I have just one chance to explain this so that he’ll believe me. “It started with the cabin—Dragonfly. I remembered being there. And then I found a photo of myself.” I get up and walk to the bedroom, returning with the photo, which he holds in both hands, studying it intently. “Trevor told me about Mallory. That your dad had her here, that she had a daughter. I started to remember things. Nothing solid . But I remember…” I trail off. I ball my hands into fists. “My mother didn’t run off after your dad died. She was killed. Murdered, I think. And then I somehow wound up on the other side of the country, and the Scotts got paid a bunch of money to take me in and not ask questions.”

“You think my father did it,” Connor says hollowly. “You think he hurt her.”

“The man in my dream. It’s him,” I say, and I don’t have to tell him which dream I’m talking about. “Connor, Alexis told me that your father didn’t die from a fall. He killed himself.”

He recoils, his face contorting in shock. “What?”

“Paloma confirmed it. She said Alexis knew but someone—presumably your grandparents—made her promise not to tell you or your mom,” I say, as gently as I can.

Connor is shaking his head. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“I know it’s hard to hear—”

“No, I mean it genuinely does not make sense,” Connor snaps. “When I was eighteen, I got a copy of the autopsy report. I thought it would bring me closure, or something like that. The cause of death was listed as hypothermia and an epidural hematoma—a blow to the temple. He would have lost consciousness briefly, and probably woken up and thought he was all right. That would last a few minutes. But the blood would have been building up in his skull. Eventually, he’d collapse again. They couldn’t definitively state if it was the cold or the bleeding in the skull that was the definitive cause of death. He fell and hit his head. That’s what happened.”

“He could have jumped,” I suggest.

“Even the lodge is only two stories,” Connor points out. “Shitty way to kill yourself. Good way to break a leg.”

“Mr. Vance… he said it was a broken neck,” I remember. “But wouldn’t he have known? He’s the one who brought the body down. What did they tell you back then?”

“Nothing. An accident. He fell,” Connor says.

“There was blood on his face,” I say. Connor looks confused. I raise a hand, gesture in a vain attempt to explain as I fumble for words. “I went to find my mom, and she—she was dying,” I say. Hand to my throat, fingers tracing the path of the blood. “She told me to hide. So I did. But he found me. He came in the door and I screamed, because he looked like a monster. The antlers behind him and his face—”

Half of it dark. With shadow and with blood. Not hers. His own.

So she’d fought back, before he hurt her. And then he came for me, and when he found me, he grabbed my hand and he was so angry—

But it wasn’t anger. I’d made the same mistake with Connor. It wasn’t anger, but fear.

I’m not supposed to go in.

I can see that door again. See it swinging open, just enough to peer through.

The girl opens the door two inches, no more. She knows she’s not meant to be here. She knows she’s not meant to see.

“Is that enough?” her mother asks.

“We need to get all of it,” a voice replies.

“It won’t matter.”

“It might.”

“You don’t know what he’s like. You don’t know how these things work.”

“So you’re just going to give up?”

“I have nowhere to go.”

“Let me help you, Mallory,” Liam says. And then he looks up and sees her, and smiles. “Hey, Teddy.”

“It wasn’t him,” I whisper, my gaze unfocused. “It wasn’t him at all. He was trying to help.” I got it wrong. I was afraid, but not of Liam Dalton.

“Theo,” Connor says slowly, “what Mallory and my father did was awful, but it wasn’t just because he was cheating on Mom. I didn’t find it out until much later. It was part of why Nick and Mom—why they got so close, after. Commiserating.”

“Nick,” I repeat, stunned.

“Mallory was living with him when she and Dad got together,” Connor says.

Nick. He’d known her, too. Known me. I thought it was odd, but I didn’t think it through. And Trevor—his cracks about disloyalty running in the family. He wasn’t just talking about his father cheating on his mother. He was talking about Liam betraying Nick.

Nick, who saw that photo in my pocket. Who saw the birthmarks on my neck and knows exactly who I am. Knows that I’ve been asking all the questions that I shouldn’t.

Connor is still talking. “When Alexis showed me those photos, I thought it didn’t make any sense. Why would Dad have had them if those bruises were his fault? Unless he was holding on to them for her. Nick’s always had anger issues. Mom used to think I butted heads with him because I didn’t want him replacing Dad, but I swear I always felt like he hated me.”

I feel numb. I touch the tips of my fingertips to my face, chasing any sensation at all.

“What exactly do you remember?” Connor asks.

I close my eyes. And I tell him.