The crunch of gravel grew louder as Wilder slowed, the house becoming clearer as they neared, and as it did, Sydney’s heart began to sink. This . . . this wasn’t the house she’d seen on the internet.

Or, well, it was, but it was older and droopier. The cheery yellow she’d seen in the Google photos was faded and peeling. The quaint shutters and eaves and the porch were there, but it all just seemed . . . tired. No fall mums in the flower boxes under the front windows, and goodness, when was the last time someone had trimmed the hedges?

Like you’re one to talk, Syd. You live in an ugly brown apartment building. You’ve never even had a porch. Let alone a sprawling lawn scattered with leaves or the acres of wild blueberry fields that were supposedly around here somewhere. Unless the internet had exaggerated that as well.

Wilder pulled up to the front of the house and cut the engine. “Well, here we are. I just hope Maggie’s not too surprised to see us.”

“What? She doesn’t know we’re coming?”

He chuckled and pushed open his door. “Of course she does. But whether she got my voicemail about our new flight time, I don’t know.”

Oh God, what am I doing?

Was that a prayer? If so, it was her first in too long and it felt about as stale as any other she’d offered through the years. Just like her hopes as she stared at the weather-beaten house in front of her. But why should the state of the home’s exterior cause so much angst?

Because somehow, the sight of it seemed to confirm her fear—that this was a hunt for a fairy tale. That she’d built this whole, yes, insane trek up in her head the same way she had when she’d gone searching for CarleeAnn. When she’d let herself ponder and imagine and even think, for a few happy weeks before that hospital visit, that maybe God had been waiting all along to lead her to her mother. That maybe He hadn’t forgotten her.

At some point since Friday night, she’d begun doing the same thing—imagining herself in this house, sitting on its pretty front porch in a quaint rocking chair, gazing at the sea. A grandmother at her side, or maybe even a father. It was as if she was homesick for a life she’d never lived.

But the porch was sagging and there was no rocking chair. And suddenly the thought of walking into the house—

At the knock on her window, she jumped, Wilder’s muffled voice reaching in. “Coming? I’d be a gentleman and open your door but—” He held up her suitcase in one hand and, in his other, the oversized coffee he’d picked up at a convenience store on the way here. Had he knocked with his elbow, then?

She opened her door and slid out.

“You okay? You were like a statue sitting there, frozen in your seat.”