Nothing has changed, like I packed my duffel and left yesterday. The double bed has the same white comforter dotted with pink dahlias—my favorite flower. Mom let me order it from a catalog when I was seven or eight, and I’d refused to get a new one when the seams frayed. The furniture is simple—a pine dresser, matching mirror, and desk all made by Dad. Gauzy curtains are held back from the large picture window on the far wall with yellow ties.

Blue ribbons from diving competitions dot the corkboard above my desk along with photos of Holly and me—homecoming dances, basketball games, paddleboard adventures on the river, camping trips beside glacial lakes. I see those photos, this room, through Thomas’s lens—a normal childhood. Was it? Maybe, on the outside, but something ugly lies beneath the surface, gnaws at the edge of my consciousness like a rat . . . or maybe that’s just my excuse for leaving this place, deserting them. Only one item in this room is new. My high school diploma, framed over the desk. Mom must’ve done that after I left.

“You look surprised,” Thomas says.

“I assumed she’d redecorate.”

“Maybe she hoped you’d come back.”

“Is that lie number four or five?” Thomas’s smile is lopsided. For the first time I notice that gold strands weave through his mop of hair.

He chuckles. “I thought my mom was strong-willed, but yours? She’s . . . a lot.”

I laugh. “That birth parent comment? Perfect timing.”

“She deserved it.”

For a moment my insides warm and Thomas is my real boyfriend, defending me. But he’s just here for the show.

Thomas nods at the far wall. “Snow globes, huh?”

The wall to the right of my curved bed frame has a six-foot-wide bookcase that I made with Dad in his shop. It holds my collection of old-fashioned glass snow globes—a total of 138. Mom hated them, said they were tacky. So why’d she keep them? Thomas slowly walks the shelves and my face burns, like I’m standing here naked. He picks up one with a farmhouse perched on the edge of a snowy ravine about to plunge into oblivion, gives it a shake, snowflakes swirl.

“I collected those.”

“Really?” Thomas jokes.

He moves along the row, pausing by the globe with an old man in a dark topcoat and derby. Face furrowed, the picture of concentration, the man dangles two small marionettes, a boy and a girl. When the globe gets shaken, the marionettes dance in the snow and the old guy grins. The globe to its right has a stooped fellow who trudges in the woods with a body rolled into the orange carpet balanced on his shoulder. Only the dead man’s feet poke out. “I found that one at an antique shop just over the river in Bingen, Washington,” I say.

Thomas picks up the globe at the end of the row. The woman inside holds an infant with both hands, about to drop her bundle of joy into a well. “Usually people collect cheap plastic ones from states,” he notes. “These are kind of macabre.”