The story the county told about Mabel Sterling shifted, and then shifted again, and then, mercifully, stopped being a story at all.

For four years she had been the woman who stole. Then, for a season, she was the woman who was framed. And eventually even that faded, and the labels fell away, and she was, at last, only Mabel — a brilliant executive, a devoted mother, a woman who had walked through the dark carrying a mattress and a small child, and had come out the other side and built a life entirely on her own terms.

Years later, an older Lily was going through a photo album and found a faded picture of two teenagers standing by a fence line, squinting into an old summer sun.

“You two knew each other way back then?” she asked, holding it up.

Mabel glanced over at Damian, who was leaning against the kitchen counter with a cup of coffee.

“A very long time ago,” she said, and smiled.