It hadn’t been easy. None of it had. It’s why they lived in almost constant isolation that first year. Daily sessions with therapists who had signed nondisclosure agreements and were paid more in a week than they normally made in a month. Night terrors, sobbing, fear of the dark, refusal to speak. And that was just Ava.

Lily had been forced to become her sister’s mouthpiece, grappling daily with the guilt she felt. She’d had to be coaxed to stop doing everything for her sister.

Quincy had given them everything. Ice cream for breakfast. Private trips to Hawaiian islands. He tried to show them that there was good in the world, even though he had a hard time seeing it himself.

He’d found it in them.

He knew they were his the moment that Ava had woken screaming again, about six months into their stay. He’d rushed into her room, knowing she refused to be touched by anyone except for Lily. When he’d sat on the edge of the bed and she’d reached out for him, he vowed to never let go.

It was that night when she’d explained what she’d seen in those final moments inside the mountain. How the man from her dreams, the one who brought her the comfort of knowing she wasn’t alone in the never-ending nightmare, stood in the same kind of cage that had trapped her for so long.

How, in just one moment, she felt different. Something in her had changed. And the man from the dreams had done it. The burden she’d carried, the dreams of the diseases, were gone. It was over.

She remembered pressing her hands against the filmy substance that ensnared her as she watched the man pull a gun out and point it to his head—

“Quincy, you’re holding up traffic,” Lily said.

“Oops, sorry. Hey, where’s the valet?” He smiled at her.

They pulled up in front of the school, amid a sea of children in perfectly coiffed ponytails and dry-cleaned uniforms. A woman in a drab suit and sensible shoes walked briskly up to his Mercedes.

“No need to get out, sir. Just let them out, and the line won’t stall—”

Quincy began to open the doors for the girls. “That,” he said, pointing to the building under construction on the corner of campus, “means everyone else can just move around me.” A sizeable sign stood in front reading, “The Quincy Martin Center for Technology.”

“Oh.” The woman forced a smile. “Of course.”

“Quincy,” Lily chastised. “Don’t make a scene.”

“Men open doors for ladies.” He reached down to give her bear hug.

“Ladies don’t need men to open anything for them,” she said, returning the hug.

“I do adore you, Lily girl,” he said, with a final kiss to her forehead.

Then he followed her around to open Ava’s door.