Six months earlier she had boarded with two suitcases and a sleeping child, sure the usable part of her life had ended.

She had pretended to sleep on a stranger’s shoulder so he could look like anyone.

He had used that ordinary disguise to get her past a man with a photograph.

The rest was not magic.

It was lawyers, mornings, a cousin who checked on her, a river, a yellow leaf, and a door she could lock from the inside.

Blaire took Luca’s hand and let the morning be as small as it needed to be.