It was recognition.

She knew that face.

She had seen it before — smaller, newer, in a hospital bassinet, across a desk where she had slid a pen and a set of forms toward a frightened pregnant woman.

Mike was meeting his daughter for the first time.

Tiffany was meeting her for the second.

And the fact that both of those things were true at the same moment, on the same lawn, at my oldest friend’s wedding, told me that the universe was not, after all, indifferent — that it had arranged, with terrible and perfect economy, for both of the people who had tried to erase me five years ago to be standing side by side when the proof that they had failed came running across the grass in a ruffled yellow dress, asking about cake.

Chapter 4 — The Woman Who Went Pale