“My daughter and myself,” the captain told him, in a sure tone that left no room for an argument, and drawing out his purse he paid the Searcher silver coins before he climbed into the carriage, too, and settled on the long seat beside Anna.

She was shaking as they rode out through the gate.

He angled in his seat to look at her. “Are you all right?”

She’d thought to get a lecture. She had not expected gentleness, and coming on the heels of so much turbulence it made her eyes begin to fill with tears she had no wish to shed.

He asked, “Where are your parents?”

“Dead.” A half-lie only, she consoled herself.

“Where do you live? How came you to Calais?”

She did not answer him, because she could not think of any way to twist the truth, and when a moment had gone by in silence, Captain Gordon tried again.

“Well, have you any family left?”

Her eyes stung as she thought of Colonel Graeme and his son, and of her uncles, and the mother she would never know, because she could do nothing but endanger them. No matter what she did, or where she went, she knew now she could never let the truth of who she was be known to anyone, or else the people she loved most would suffer for it.

Fighting back the tears, she shook her head. “No. I have no one.”

She could feel his gaze upon her face, as though he, too, were making a decision. He asked quietly, “Is your name truly Anna?”

Anna thought, and then decided that much of herself was safe to keep, and so she nodded.

“Anna Moray?”

“No.” She could not ever claim that name, she knew. Nor could she any longer be the Anna Logan who had lived at Ypres, and been betrayed, and who was being searched for now by those who meant to hurt her uncle. She must evermore be no one’s child.

And yet, if all her dreams were thus to shatter, Anna thought, she could at least pick up the brightest shard of them, and cling to it, however much it cut, and take it with her into the unknown.

She drew a breath, and said, “My name is Anna Jamieson.”

Reading Group Guide

1. Did you see the twist coming? Do you think the author played fair with her readers? Were there any particular clues that you spotted?

2. The Oxford Reference Dictionary defines an unreliable narrator as one “who cannot be relied on either to tell the truth or in the case of self-reflexive narrators to know the truth.” The term was coined by American literary theorist Wayne C. Booth in 1961, but unreliable narrators have been around for centuries. The unreliable narrator of Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, published in 1926, insists that he “faithfully recorded” the facts that are “all true, you see.” In The Vanished Days, Adam tells us “if you’ve read this closely you will find I’ve sought to tell the truth.” Did he? How do you feel about unreliable narrators? Do you have any favorite examples, in books or films?