As she walked through the living room toward the back of the house, she expected any moment to see something that would send her into some kind of shock.

She found the kitchen at the back. On the table were a bowl and spoon, a small plate and butter knife. Her last meal with her mother?

She tried to imagine herself sitting there. Tried to imagine the woman sitting across from her. Her mother.

“Jolene?” Dulcie asked behind her.

She shook her head as she moved away from the table and headed for the stairs. Might as well get it over with.

“Honey, I’m not sure—”

Jolene didn’t wait to hear what Dulcie had to say. She’d come this far. She had to go upstairs. Part of her prayed that she would remember. She wanted these people to mean something to her. Laura Beaumont. Angel Beaumont. Dulcie, the sister she never knew she had.

As she hurried up the stairs, her heart a-thunder in her chest, she heard Dulcie at her heels.

At the top of the stairs, Jolene slowed. All her senses were on alert as she turned. One room caught her eye. A child’s room. Angels painted on the walls. They were as striking as Dulcie had said they were.

She moved toward the room like a sleepwalker. Angel Beaumont’s room. Her room. At the door she stopped and was surprised when she burst into tears. She felt Dulcie’s hand on her shoulder.

“Jolene? Do you remember?”

She shook her head. “I just suddenly felt so sorry for this little girl,” she said, wiping her tears. “There is so much sadness in this room. Loneliness. Can’t you feel it?”

Dulcie nodded.

“Where is her room?” She couldn’t bring herself to call Laura her mother. And yet calling her Laura felt wrong, too.

“Down there.”

Jolene walked toward the open door to the room at the front of the house. She could see part of a faded yellow curtain billowing in and out on the hot wind.

Jolene had to force herself, one foot in front of the other, to enter the room. The vanity against the wall, the dresser... She froze as she saw the stained bed. The murder story leaped into her mind and she could see the woman lying on the bed, the killer standing over her, the glint of the knife’s blade in the light.

After a moment she let the breath out she’d been holding. She could feel Dulcie’s gaze on her, a look of fear and wonder in her eyes—and hope.

She felt nothing. Even when she told herself that her mother had died here. She couldn’t remember that mother, couldn’t remember this life at all. Thank God.

“Sorry,” she said to Dulcie as she turned and left the room.

“Nothing at all?” Dulcie asked as they descended the stairs.