“And?” Daniel prompts, and Lynell sees pain in the way his cheeks fill with color.

“I stayed there all day. At some point, a priest approached me and asked if I was okay and I lost it. I couldn’t stop crying long enough to tell him who I was or what I was doing, so he took me to this place for young girls like me run by nuns.” Lynell stops talking to take a breath and turns away from Daniel. She walks across the room and runs her hands through her hair, remembering that first night in the house as if it was yesterday. “No one asked me questions,” she says, her memories of being led to a room full of other girls and onto a cot with soft sheets and a thin pillow so vivid it was almost physical. “It was a halfway house managed by the nunnery. All the girls were either homeless or drug addicts or,” she scoffs, “disgraced pregnant women.” She turns, her eyes softening at the sight of him standing, arms at his side, drinking in her story. “They let me stay until I had Anna. I helped around the house, went grocery shopping, and went to church with them. I gave them a fake name and they only asked questions once, but I didn’t want to tell them anything and they dropped it.”

“You stayed there the whole time?”

She nods. “Almost eight months. After Anna was born, I stayed for a few more weeks to heal; it was a hard delivery. I felt safe there. Taken care of.”

“What happened to—”

“Anna?” Lynell interrupts. Daniel nods.

“The nuns let me name her and say goodbye, but then they took her away. They already had a family lined up to take her. They told me she’d be safe.”

Lynell stops, trapped in her memory.

“I’m sure she was. And still is,” Daniel says. “So, no one but the nuns and the other girls in the house knows about Anna?”

Lynell shrugs, reluctantly remembering that the perceived safety of the nunnery was long past. “I went out a couple of times when I was obviously pregnant, so people could have seen me, I guess. But for all intents and purposes, yeah, only the nuns and a few of the girls. There were about fifteen of us during those last four months. But no one knew my real name. Oh, and the priest that took me there.”

Daniel nods, resting his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Okay, so . . .” he moves so his forehead is in his hand and takes a deep breath. “So, no one really knows that Lynell Mize—Lynell Carter,” he corrects himself, and Lynell sucks in a breath. She hasn’t heard that name in three years and didn’t think she ever would again. “No one knows that you had a baby?” he asks, staring at the ceiling and crossing his arms.

Lynell shakes her head. “I don’t think so.” Despite the early hours of the morning, she hears horns honking outside and grits her teeth. She rubs her right hand up her left arm, trying to stave off anxiety.