Wilder lifted one corner of his mouth in a wry half-grin. “You just can’t say no to Margaret Muir when she gets that hopeful look on her face. She’s the sweetest lady but she’s ruthless with her tactics of manipulation. Anyhow, I have this theory—” He shook his head. “No, let me start from the beginning.”

Sydney reached for her own can of pop, still unopened.

“Maggie had a daughter, Diana. There was a car accident twenty-eight years ago on the coast not far from Maggie’s house. Diana died but her two-year-old daughter, Cynthia—who was believed to have been in the vehicle with her—her body was never found.” He slid his palms over his jeans. “Maggie’s been convinced ever since that her granddaughter’s still alive, still out there somewhere. I’ve been doing my best to investigate with very little to go on.”

Sydney cupped her hands around her cold can. “And somehow your investigation led you to me?”

He nodded. “Diana left Muir Harbor at seventeen and the working theory was always that she’d run off with an out-of-towner she’d met at the local pub. But I have a different notion altogether. Been doing a little digging into Diana’s other connections. Turns out her best friend from childhood dropped out of college right around the same time Diana took off. And strangely, they both returned to Muir Harbor on the same weekend two years later—the weekend of the accident.” He paused, took a breath. “The friend’s name was CarleeAnn Picknell.”

Not until that moment had anything Wilder said truly resonated with her. No sudden prick in her spirit when he spoke of Margaret or Diana or some town in Maine that shared their last name. No whimsical whisper in her soul hushing her doubts or stirring her with possibilities.

But that name and the way Wilder said it, the way he was watching her now . . .

“My birth mom.”

He massaged his knee again. “So you do know—”

“Very little. Only that she brought me to an adoption agency in Illinois when I was a toddler. Begged them to take me.” Then just . . . left. Disappeared. Not that Sydney remembered any of it, but she’d heard the story, whispered from one social worker to another years later.

Not until she was an adult had she known the name that went with the woman.

She stood abruptly, grip tight on her can—enough to send pop dribbling over the edge. She strode to the kitchenette at the far end of the room, plucked a glass from the cupboard, and poured out her Diet Coke.

Most of the time she didn’t mind the small size of this apartment. Micah always called it tiny, but she liked to think of it as snug and inviting. She’d sewn the pretty gray curtains in the main room’s lone window herself. Had shopped discounts and clearance racks to find throw pillows and blankets—all coordinated in navy blues and pale pinks.

It might be small and everything filling it might be cheap, but this apartment was hers. And for a girl who’d bounced around in foster homes until she was eighteen, a place like this meant something.