He wheeled her over to where a flourishing set of rosebushes were contained behind a knee-high iron fence. Three Adirondack chairs with thick cushions were situated before it, facing the fountain.

As Blue reached over to smell one of the blooms, William sat, watching her. “I just … I just can’t believe…”

“That I’m alive?” She laughed in a tone so similar to his grandmother’s that goose bumps raised on his arm. “It’s a good question, one I’ve asked myself more than once. I honestly wished to die so often as a young woman that maybe I cursed myself, hoping death would come for me. But I’m certainly glad it ignored me. Because here you are. I just wish your grandmother were here too.”

“She needs to know that you’re alive.”

Blue looked past him. “I’ve wanted to call her every day for the past fifteen years. As soon as I found out she was alive. No family should have endured this. But it appears this is the burden of ours.”

She turned to him. “You thought you knew her story; how your grandmother’s mother died young and she was raised by her father. Now, you’ve read what happened when we found Lynn in Mexico. We placed the letters in chronological order for obvious reasons; you see that my husband and Dr. Martin obviously believed I had died when the building collapsed. In turn, I was told they died in the hurricane. But the truth is quite different.”

“How did you survive?” he asked.

“I didn’t want to. Everyone I loved was gone. I had no extended family; my parents were already dead and I had no siblings. My body was crushed, I would certainly never walk again. Even if I wanted to leave and return home, I couldn’t. But I kept hearing their whispers, their suggestions. You may find in life, my boy, that anger can keep you alive.”

“Whispers? Suggestions? From whom?”

She folded her hands on her lap. “From the very organization that is hunting you. The same agency that constructed the building in Mexico, that collected the abducted who were returned. They are not characters in a movie or comic book. They are very real, with a very real purpose. And I became one of them.”

William’s ears flushed. “You joined them? Even though they knowingly took your daughter? And then gave her something that erased her memories?”

“And now you know they did it to you as well. And I know that must make you angry.”

William frowned. “I don’t think angry comes close to how I feel about it. It took years for me to adjust to the strangers who claimed to be my family. I just … can’t understand why you would join a government operation responsible for what they did to your daughter.”