There’s a confused murmur from everyone else. They all know something big is happening, but they don’t understand what.

“It was.” I pull away from Val to stand on my own. Because I refuse to be weak when I say this. “A long time ago.”

Dad had my name changed when he took me back to Texas with him. When he came to get me.

After.

I guess with my mom gone—dead—he wanted a fresh start for me. For both of us, maybe. So April Kendrick became Avril Vincent. Avril because it’s French for April. Vincent because that’s his last name, even though my mother had never legally claimed it for herself. Or for me.

I couldn’t remember anything from before anyway, so it was almost like I’d just been born.

A brand-new name for a brand-new person.

“Oh my God,” Willa whispers. She’s forgotten how to blink. “Oh my God.” She’s still repeating that phrase over and over as she gets unsteadily to her feet and crosses to me. She grabs me and pulls me into her arms, and I feel her trembling. Something inside me breaks, and I start to sob, even though I couldn’t say exactly why.

“You look so much like her,” Willa says when she finally pulls back to look at me again. Her hands are on my wet cheeks. She runs her palms over my hair. “Of course. I should have known when I first saw you. When I saw that audition tape last winter. Your headshot. But I didn’t.” She’s still staring at me like she can’t quite believe it. “Not until I saw you onstage just now. Alive. In that moment. And then I knew.” She smiles. “I knew.” She hugs me tight again. “I’ve only known one other actress who had that kind of power to just wholly transform herself.” She chokes back a little sob, and it starts me crying again. “And it just hit me. Bam! I knew it had to be you. You had to be Nicole’s daughter.”

“But I fell,” I say, and I’m embarrassed all over again thinking of how I hit the floor. What that must have looked like to Willa. “I messed it all up.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “Oh my God. No. Sweetheart. You were beautiful. Transcendent.” She smiles at me. Lays her hands on each side of my face. “You were Eden.” Willa takes a shaky breath. “Holy shit,” she says, and that makes us both laugh a little bit. “This is just unbelievable.” She touches my face again. “But absolutely expected, too. Inevitable. Because of course you had to find your way home.”