To hear the things they’d told him, as they arrived in Skybriar on that final day: You’ll be happier here, Jacob. Lucy has more time to deal with your . . . quirks.

To understand how humiliating it had been, that first day at school, when he’d realized all the other children could read, and he’d had to put his hand up and whisper to the teacher that he . . . couldn’t. Because his parents hadn’t cared enough to teach him. Because they’d assumed, thanks to his slow speech and his atypical processing, that he was unable to learn.

No, no one was supposed to notice all those parts. And yet, when Eve turned those huge, dark eyes on him, her brow furrowed and her soft mouth pressed into a hard line, he had the oddest sensation that she’d noticed it all.

Which was obviously impossible. But still.

“So you met Lucy when you were ten,” she said finally, “because your parents showed up and . . . gave you to her?”

Jacob decided not to mention that the giving had been more . . . dropping him off on the doorstep and telling him to ring the bell as they drove away. “Yes.”

“And before that, you—what, traveled the world with them?”

“Yes.” Most people thought of that as an idyllic childhood. He was aware that millennial hippies in particular would call it parenting goals.

But Eve looked horrified, probably because she’d read all his guidebooks and seen his meticulously cleaned bathroom and realized that spending the first ten years of his life on the road had grated against his fucking soul and turned him into the most nervous and unsettled child on earth. “Shit.”

“Yes.”

“I mean, shit, Jacob. I bet you hated that. Did you hate that?”

He opened his mouth to say Mind your business, but three completely different words emerged on a sigh. “God, so much.” He heard a hint of something vulnerable in his own voice and tried not to die of embarrassment. Attempting to lighten the mood after that little spillage of angst, he cleared his throat and said, “Thank God they eventually came to their senses and dumped me somewhere nice and quiet.” On second thought, maybe the word dumped wasn’t a mood lightener after all.

It certainly didn’t have that effect on Eve. In fact, when he flicked a quick look at her, she was clearly the opposite of amused.

Her expression was smooth, blank, almost serene. But her eyes burned. Badly.

“Your parents,” she said, “sound like pricks.”

Jacob instinctively wanted to argue, even after all these years. Instead, he took a breath, remembered how many times he’d woken up alone in the dark, and nodded. “Mm.”

“There’s a story, in my family, you know.” She looked up at him suddenly. “It happened before I was born, but my grandmother loves to tell it. Back when my oldest sister was crawling, our family lived in some big old mansion. But the more my sister explored, and the better she got at communicating, the more she made it clear she didn’t like all those empty rooms. She liked the smaller spaces where she felt safe. She wanted a little bedroom and hallways that didn’t echo.” Eve was watching him steadily as she talked. “So my parents sold the house.”