The others shut up, looked at her, and with that she was thrust into the role of de facto leader. She didn’t mind—if there was one thing she’d learned in business it was that if anything was ever going to get done there had to be only one person in charge—but she felt just as lost as the rest of them and singularly unqualified to take control of their efforts to… what? Escape? Find out what was at the heart of the House? She was not sure what the others wanted.

Still, she could preside over the discussion, she could maintain some semblance of order and bring some organizational skills to the table, and she looked from one face to another. “All right,” she said. “Who wants to go first?”

They’d all, it seemed, known Billington or Billingsly or Billings or whoever the hell he was when they were children. As Stormy described his experiences in New Mexico, there were nods of recognition all around. While the specifics of his story might have been different from hers, the underlying thread of it was not, and Laurie knew exactly what he had gone through.

The same was true for Mark, hitching throughout the West; Norton, in Iowa; and Daniel, in Pennsylvania.

Then she told her story.

And everyone understood.

She felt an immediate kinship with the others. It wasn’t quite as if they were siblings separated at birth who had suddenly found family, but it was along those lines and there was a definite connection between them.

Only Mark stood apart. He was younger than the rest of them and although that could have accounted for it, she didn’t think so. He seemed… different somehow, more unfazed by it all, as though he accepted, even, on some level, understood what was happening. None of this seemed to be as alien to him as it was to the rest of them, and while she did not doubt his loyalties, while she knew he was as much a victim as the rest of them, he was the only one whose story she did not entirely believe. She did not think he was lying, but she had the feeling he was keeping something back, not telling the whole truth.

And that kept him at arm’s length.

They were no closer to knowing what was going on after they’d spilled their guts than they had been before. They could empathize with each other, they could sympathize, but understanding eluded them. Their stories might all be similar in tone, but on the most basic level, the narrative level, they were contradictory and did not mesh.

In addition to the obvious disparities of location, there were the times of arrival. Daniel had been the first to pick up on that, and after Mark had finished his story, he asked, “How long have you been here?”

Mark shrugged. “Since yesterday.”

“What day was that?” Daniel pressed him.