My dad gets up and grabs Uncle Jim’s glass. He pats my shoulder as he passes behind me. I sit next to my mother, feeling obligated to make conversation, which I do, but I steer the conversation to the bookstore and the weather and how much I like Graybridge. Sadie. Anything to keep talking while I know what’s running through their minds. How is she coping? Is she going to be able to hold it together after what she’s been through? How could anybody?

After catching up with everyone, I feel safe to retreat to the kitchen. It’s like my friends and my Graybridge family are in one place, separate from the people from my past, and it needs to stay that way. But as I walk down the hall, I change direction and head toward the side porch. I need a minute, so I unlock the door, and cold air rushes to greet me, but I don’t care. I just need a break. I sit on the glider, an old piece of furniture left by the woman from whom we bought the house. It’s a relic from the past. Plastic upholstery covered with faded yellow flowers. It crackles beneath me as I sit and look out on the gray afternoon. Fat snowflakes float lazily past the windows, and I let my gaze follow one, then another on its trip to the ground.

“Molly?” Corrine stands in the doorway. “You okay?”

I swipe a tear from my cheek. “Yeah.”

She moves into the room and shuts the door, takes a seat in a rattan chair across from me. “It’s really cold out here.”

“I’ll come in in a minute.”

She clears her throat, pulls on the hem of her Vera Wang dress. “I know this is hard, especially with everyone from back home here.”

“They won’t say anything, will they?” My heart is in my throat.

“No, Molly. You know that. They know better.” Dad has made it clear for years that when they’re here in Graybridge, the past is totally off-limits, but I still worry.

I take a deep breath and watch the snowflakes.

“Don’t you think it would be a good idea for you to talk to someone?” Corrine says.

I know what she means by this euphemism. I’ve spent half my life in therapy. “Probably.”

“Does Elise know?”

I shake my head. “No one here knows, Corrine. No one except Jay, and that’s the way I want it. That was the reason we moved to Graybridge, wasn’t it? So that we could live a normal life. So that no one knew who I was.” I can’t bring myself to say it, the moniker given to me by the media. The girl in the cellar.

“Yes, of course. But now that Jay . . .”