“She knew her name hadn’t always been Hannah Ohlsson. But it took us a long time to convince her that we didn’t know what her name was before. That we didn’t know anything at all about her past. Just that she came to us after experiencing a profound trauma. That was why she had no parents. Her old life and any record of it had been erased, and only her new life existed. One night while we were sleeping—after another evening of a thousand questions we couldn’t answer—she destroyed every single picture of herself. Cut some of them up and flushed them down the toilet. Others she burned outside in a barrel we use to burn up old leaves. ‘Those weren’t me,’ she told us calmly over breakfast the next morning. She’d even found all of the negatives that we kept in a cupboard in the basement. ‘I don’t exist. So no pictures should exist either.’ Of course we wanted to take new pictures. But she wouldn’t allow it. And there’s no joy in looking at pictures of someone who you’ve forced in front of a camera. Only one photograph survived the purge. This one.”

The adoptive father grabbed his wallet out of his back pocket. Fished a folded photograph from a compartment. A little girl. Who looked exactly as she did the day Grens waved goodbye to her.

“It was in here. So she missed it. The first picture I took of her on the day she arrived.”

A little girl smiling at the camera. With no clue that the front steps she was standing on led to the home where she’d spend the rest of her childhood. Or maybe she did know, understood it even then. Because the smile seemed genuine. Like someone who’d been tense for a long time who suddenly allowed themselves to relax.

“Zana.”

“Excuse me?”

“Her name. Before. Zana Lilaj.”

The two adoptive parents exchanged a glance in that wordless language of theirs. Grens wondered if their daughter had just become someone else to them. More whole. Or if the opposite was true—if she felt just a little less like theirs. Or maybe that didn’t matter. At least they had one answer to give the next time someone asked.

“Zana?”

“Yes.”

“That was her name when you met her?”

“Yes. And during those weeks she was in my care.”

“And her . . . parents? Lilaj, you said? What was the trauma we weren’t allowed to know about?”

“I promise to tell you everything the next time we meet. When I’ve found her. That’s why I’m here. I have to know where she is because I’m . . . worried. Something might happen to her.”