“I don’t know what I’m doing in this world,” I told him. “I’m all alone. If I disappeared, no one would notice. No one would care. Some days I just want to walk out into the forest and never be seen again.”

I assumed I’d get the usual speech that people give when you talk like that. When they know you’ve been contemplating suicide. The pat on the head. The platitudes. You’re young. You have your whole life ahead of you. But that’s the last thing I wanted to hear. Having my whole life ahead of me was the problem. That was why I’d considered ending it. I couldn’t bear to think about living the rest of my life feeling the way I did.

But Tom said nothing like that to me. His entire demeanor changed. He captured me with those dark eyes and held me fixed with his aura of goodness and concern. It was as if hearing my story had given him a mission, and he was bound to see it through. I didn’t think I’d ever met someone who had such a fierce, reflexive loyalty. He was like a younger version of Darrell, and yet he had something that Darrell didn’t. I sensed no black-and-white morality from him. He’d seen strong people crumble. He was a strong person himself, and he knew someday he’d crumble, too.

I didn’t know this man at all. He was a stranger to me. We’d just met. And yet I already knew—I knew—that if I were in trouble, I could go to him, and he would suspend everything else in his life to be there for me. There was literally no one else I could say that about.

That’s the man Tom Ginn was, sweetheart.

But of course, you know that.

“What can I do?” he asked. “How can I help you?”

“I have no idea. I really don’t.”

“Talk to me.”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

“Well, I’m not leaving until you tell me everything about yourself.”

“Why would you want that?”

He was honest with me. “There’s something about you, Rebecca, and I can’t even explain what it is. But I want to know the real you.”

“I don’t show that to anyone.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m scared of her,” I said.

“You won’t scare me.”

I really thought that was true. I thought I’d finally met a man who would believe me and understand me, a man I could share my deepest secrets with. Honestly, that was the one and only moment in my life when I was tempted to tell another soul about the Ursulina.

But no.