Joanna felt as if she was watching in slow motion.

Baby?

Nessa made a sound. “Pregnant?”

Breathing rapidly, Joanna dragged a stool from beneath the kitchen island and sat down hard.

Why did you crash, Cliff? Did she tell you she was pregnant?

“How can no one know who she is? Does she have amnesia or something?” Nessa put the remote down. “Even if she’s lost her purse, surely someone is missing her by now? I can’t go a day without someone in my family checking on me. If it’s not my mom, it’s my brothers. That’s a blurry photo, but she looks pretty young. Someone out there must recognize her.”

Joanna picked up the remote, paused the image and stared.

Her heart started to pound.

No. It couldn’t be. Could it?

The remote slipped from her fingers and landed on the countertop with a clatter but she didn’t notice.

She stood up and walked to the screen so she could take a closer look.

It was hard to tell. She could be wrong. She had to be wrong, surely? Not possible. It didn’t make sense. Unless—

She sat back down, legs shaking.

There was only one way to find out, and that was to see the woman in person.

And if she was right, if her suspicions proved to be correct, then this woman wasn’t “unknown.” Joanna knew exactly who she was.

She knew everything. She even knew why Cliff had crashed the car.

“Nessa—” Her voice was croaky. “I need to drive to the hospital.”

6

Ashley

How had they managed to take her photo? And how had they found out she was pregnant?

No one knew exactly how, but somehow it had leaked.

And that was bad, so bad.

The hospital had expressed their deep dismay, offered an apology and assured her that there would be an investigation. They suspected another patient was responsible, but how it had happened hardly mattered. What mattered was that it had, and the invasion of privacy was a shock.

Ashley had always lived a quiet, low-key, ordinary life. Her father had died when she was twelve and her mother had worked hard in two jobs to keep them solvent. Ashley had excelled at math and had wanted to study computer engineering, but then life had changed in an instant and college was no longer an option. If her mother hadn’t died, she probably wouldn’t be in the position she was in now. But she had, and here she was, angry at the world, angry at her mother for leaving her like this when she needed her more than ever, guilty for feeling angry. Most of all she was scared because now she had to figure out life by herself. She didn’t know how, and so far her attempts to solve her problems had been spectacularly unsuccessful.