But was it my daughter?

Of course it was, I told myself. How could it be anyone else?

The sudden, unexpected release of the unbearable strain of all these months had me imagining things.

Yes. That sounded good.

I wished I could have believed a single word of it.

Of course the strain of not knowing if she’d ever wake up had been crushing. I mean, how could these doctors bring her back to consciousness if none of them could say why she was unconscious?

Well, she was conscious now—or at least someone was conscious. But that change in her eyes…it sounds so tenuous, so vapid, so insubstantial, so stupid when I put it into words, but a mother knows her daughter, and that girl in the hospital…nope…not my Ellie.

I finished my half-dozen sushi pieces and stepped out into the spring air. As I started back toward the medical center I saw a teenager walking toward me. Something so familiar about her gait. And then I realized…

“Ellie! What—?”

“Oh, hello, Mother.” Calm, collected, and as cool as can be. “I told you I had to get out of there.”

She didn’t even pause as she came abreast of me, just kept walking. She had Blanky tied around her neck like a cape.

“But where…?” I pointed to her bare feet and baggy jeans and Hofstra T-shirt.

“Borrowed from my new roommate. She won’t miss them for a while.”

I fell into step beside her. “But what about rehab?”

“Do I look like I need rehab?”

I had to admit to myself that she didn’t. She’d lost weight during the ordeal—we both had—but I’d had excess pounds to lose, not her.

“But the doctors—”

“—can pound salt. I—oooh, looky here.”

She stopped short and stared at a pair of garbage cans filled with carpentry scraps sitting by the curb. Someone was renovating.

She started pulling out lengths of two-by-four and molding and handing them to me.

“Hold these.”

She dug further and pulled out some galvanized metal strips. These she kept herself as she started walking again.

“I’m going to need some supplies,” she said. “I’ll need a hammer, nails, screws, a cordless drill, some of that Gorilla Glue, a soldering iron, oh, and a protractor.”

“Why on Earth…?”

“I told you: I need to build a shelter.”

HARI

“Your skills may prove crucial to my future, and to yours as well.”

Yeah, right, Hari thought as she stopped before a Chelsea townhouse on West Twenty-first Street. Her “skills” were with numbers—specifically forensic accounting.

Seeing a client on a Sunday was no big deal—she worked seven days a week, after all—but a house call? Normally she didn’t visit a client’s home unless big bucks were in the offing, but this fellow had all but begged her, saying no way could he come to her. She’d considered blowing him off, but his address was between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, a short, tree-lined walk from her office in the Flatiron District, and the May day was mild and sunny, so why not?