Her hair was in the same short, grandma-ish style as it had been when we stayed with her. She’d come straight from work, in Peanuts scrubs and white sneakers.

She hugged me and kissed me on one cheek, held me at arm’s length by my shoulders so she could look at me. I sensed people staring at us. A teenaged girl with pink hair, a young kid sitting on his mom’s lap, a beardless old guy in the corner. I tried to stop caring about them by looking at her. Her eyes were as sardonic as ever—a word I didn’t know when I was five, but I always knew she had no bullshit about her.

“What do I call you, honey?” she said.

I guess, when I’d phoned her to tell her I was coming, I hadn’t called myself by name. I’d said I was the daughter of a friend of hers, and we’d stayed with her a long time ago. She’d told me of course I could stay with her, and she’d given me her address. She hadn’t asked why I needed a place to go.

It wasn’t shelter I wanted. It wasn’t answers, either. Though I was going to ask her if she knew why you stole me.

“I’m Hannah,” I told her that day she picked me up.

What I was looking for was something I could barely name. I hadn’t expected to feel the way I did when I saw the smile rise in her face at the sound of my voice. She’d never heard me called Hannah before, but she recognized my voice.

I was home, for once. I was in a place where I belonged.

Toledo itself was unfamiliar. You and I had driven in and out, and the rest of the time we were holed up at W’s. But her house … She hadn’t moved, and seeing the stoop and the oak tree standing sentinel brought a flood of relief, because W was real and her house was real. You’d pretended plenty of times over the years that W didn’t exist, like we’d never stayed with her. You didn’t want me to be connected to anything we’d left behind.

I’d remembered anyway, but seeing for myself where we’d been was vindication, proof of what I already knew: how much you’d lied. How you’d tried to erase my memories but hadn’t fully succeeded. I don’t know why, but more than meeting my father, going back to W’s taught me this: if I could hang onto memories of W, if I could find her again, I could escape you and your version of reality.