“She didn’t want to find Andrew so she could bring him home,” Maria said, and her voice was quiet and certain and terrible.

“She wanted to make sure he never came home.

She wanted him found so he could be kept gone — permanently — before the seven years ran out and before you married her, so that nothing could ever unwind what she was about to gain.” And Daniel sat in that hospital room and understood, at last, the full architecture of the thing he had almost married.

Vanessa had not stumbled onto an opportunity.