Julian gasped and took an involuntary step backward, as though I were an apparition.

Evelyn let out a strangled, terrified sound and staggered against the wall, staring at me as though I were a ghost risen from the beach where she had left me to disappear.

“How,” Julian whispered.

“How are you here?

You didn’t have a passport.

You didn’t have a phone.

You had nothing.

You had nothing.” But before I answered him, there was one thing that mattered more than any confrontation, one thing I had flown six thousand miles and set an entire legal machine in motion for.