It wasn’t fate that reunited them.

It was attention.

The same cheap, priceless thing that had reached Edith in the first place.

Chapter 14 — Room Seven

Natalie arrived at Oakridge at nine-twenty the next morning.

I know the exact time because I’d spent half an hour pacing in front of the clock in the lobby.

She was forty-three now, a poised, dark-haired woman, and she’d caught the first bus out of Indianapolis at dawn because she would not wait one more day — not after a lifetime of waiting.

She came through the sliding glass doors holding a small, worn leather photo album clutched against her chest with both arms, and her eyes were already scanning past Veronica’s hug, past me, down the hall.