Not innocence.

Just the right amount of guilt, and no more.

Chapter 16 — Two Lives

The bravest thing Natasha did in all her recovery was dial a phone number in Nebraska she had not been allowed to dial in six years.

Her mother answered, and Natasha closed her eyes and said, “Mom, it’s really me,” and I sat beside her and listened to a woman on the far end of the line make a sound I have no words for — six years of grief and false belief breaking open at once.

Because Laura had spent those years thinking her daughter had cut them off, never knowing that Brock had answered every call, blocked every number, burned every letter, and built for her family the same lie he built for everyone: the long-suffering husband, the ungrateful wife.