Renee White couldn’t have been more than fifteen in the picture, but she looked as though she was trying to be older than that. She wore a halter top and tight jeans that were too mature for her and there was something about her stance too, the way she cocked her hip, that said less about her than the person taking the Polaroid.

With her left hand, young Renee made the sign for “I love you.” With her right, she held a gun.

As a kid, Robin had been unfazed by the gun, a small silver thing she’d fully believed to be a toy. But now, she didn’t know what to believe.

Robin took hold of her mother’s hand again. She placed the Polaroid in it. “Who took this picture?” she whispered, thinking of the faded photo of April Cooper she’d seen online—a young, unsmiling girl with blond hair like Renee’s. “Was it Gabriel LeRoy, Mom? Did Gabriel take your picture?”

Robin started to tremble. She knelt down and placed her cheek against her mother’s cool wrist, the hand at her neck like the hand of a mannequin. “Was it Gabriel?” Robin’s voice cracked, and soon she was crying silently, each sob sinking deep into her abdomen, a bottomless, never-ending despair. The Polaroid dropped to the floor. She watched it through the blur of her tears and imagined it burning.

Robin cried until she was simply too tired to cry anymore, and only then did she hear it. A low, soft moan. Robin froze. Looked at her mother’s face. Took her hand again. Squeezed it again, expecting nothing.

Mom squeezed back.

The squeeze was weak, but it was real. “Verity!” Robin yelled. “Doctor!” And within moments she was in the hallway with the guards, one of them bringing the radio to his lips, contacting the station. “She’s waking up,” she was telling them, telling anyone she could. “My mother. I think she’s waking up.”

ERIC SURPRISED ROBIN. When she called him at work to tell him that the doctors had said her mother seemed to be stabilizing and that they were in the process of weaning her off the ventilator, she’d expected, at the most, some encouraging words and a promise to come home early tonight. But instead, he’d taken the train back immediately, making it to the hospital cafeteria around the time Quentin Garrison was supposed to show up.

Robin stood up, surprised and relieved that it was Eric, not Quentin, calling out her name. There was only so much tension and uncertainty she could handle, and she’d had her fill for now. Eric, though . . . He’d come home.

He took her in his arms and she held him tightly and lost herself in the rare feeling of not being alone. “How is Renee?” he said. “When can we see her?”

“I’m hoping soon. The nurse promised she’d come get me.”