DAWN’S PARENTS LOOK DIFFERENT, standing there on Nana’s porch in Chicago. Wendy looks older than Dawn remembers. Her roots are showing and the crow’s-feet around her eyes are deeper.

Cam looks smaller. He looks tired. He has his arm around Wendy and he holds her close, and the two of them look at Dawn standing in Nana’s doorway and they seem to nudge closer to each other, and Cam holds Wendy tighter.

And Dawn can see that her mother is scared. And Cam is scared, too.

They’re scared of Dawn, both of them, and it just feels so…

wrong.

Chapter 136

DAWN’S FIRST INSTINCT is to hug Wendy, and even Cam.

Her second instinct is to slam the door in their faces.

She does neither.

She stands there and stares at Cam and Wendy, and Cam and Wendy stare back, and neither of them says anything, and Dawn tries to be tough, tries to remind herself that it was Cam and Wendy who had her kidnapped in the first place.

That it was Wendy who replaced her dad, who fell in love with Cam too soon.

That she should hate them both for what they’ve put her through, for ruining her life even before the kidnapping.

But Cam and Wendy look so old, and tired, and scared.

They look like they’ve been lost in the forest, too.

And Dawn realizes she can’t hate them, as much as she wants to. She realizes, to her horror, that she actually feels kind of guilty.

“I’m not going back to Sacramento,” she tells them. “Just so you know.”

Wendy and Cam glance at each other. “We’re not here to bring you home,” Cam tells her. And he squeezes Wendy’s shoulder again. “We just want to see for ourselves you’re all right.”

Beside him, Wendy begins to cry.

And Dawn feels even worse.

Chapter 137

THEY CALL AN UNEASY TRUCE, Dawn and Wendy and Cam. They go out for coffee.

They go out for coffee, and as they sit across from each other amid a sea of hurried, stressed-out Chicago people, and sip their drinks, Wendy dabs at her eyes and doesn’t say anything, and Dawn watches people go by, and she doesn’t say anything, either. And eventually, Cam clears his throat.

“It must have been so scary,” he says. “Out in the wilderness.”

Dawn sips her coffee and doesn’t reply.

And after a long silence, Cam tries again. “We would never have sent you,” he says, “if we knew, Dawn; they swore to us it was safe.”

Dawn still doesn’t answer. She knows that he’s trying, but she’s just not here for it. She doesn’t want to give him an inch.

And Cam knows it.