My pulse quickened as I caught sight of it, the soaring concrete wall running along the building until it reached the roof, then arching up and away. The museum itself was a simple glass-fronted rectangle except for that single wing, miraculous in its weight, its size, and its unsupported grace. I’d loved that building, loved going to work there. As I waited for the crosswalk to empty of pedestrians, that love felt like an old bruise. It was Aimee’s fault I wouldn’t be welcome there, Aimee’s fault I’d lost it all.

I took a ticket from the automated dispenser and drove into the parking garage, not the familiar employee lot behind the museum.

Would I even get through the door? I might have been blacklisted as a disgruntled employee or theft risk. My hair was longer now than it had been, lighter from all my walks in the sun; my body was shaped differently, softer, rounder; and I wasn’t wearing the hip contemporary clothes or polished makeup of a museum docent. I looked like a mom. Maybe my blandness would give me the anonymity I needed.

I entered through the side door from the parking garage, and the first person I saw was a familiar security guard, Jared, still working the morning shift. I hurried toward the atrium without looking at him, afraid that if I smiled in greeting, it might trigger his memory. To my right, a hallway branched off to a large community room used by caterers prepping for events. Weddings, corporate parties, fund-raising galas—those were all big bucks for our small museum. On this holiday weekend in October, odds were good there’d be something going on tonight.

Walking straight, I entered the atrium, where the ceiling soared over two stories high and a broad stairway led to the galleries on the second floor.

Through floor-to-ceiling windows, I could see the concrete steps leading from the main entrance to the sidewalk and the street. Above me, ribbons of blown glass hung from steel wires, and when the daylight moved across them, they seemed to spin like paper stars on Grace’s mobile. This was a new installation since I’d last been in the museum, and I felt a pang at how beautiful it was, and how much I must have missed.

Clenching my purse, I skirted the main desk, where a stranger, a woman who looked too young to be out of school, was rearranging the brochures in their plastic stand. Not Lena and not someone who thought of me as a criminal. Just an ordinary girl, like I used to be.

A voice echoed from the galleries above me. Yonas, who I’d always considered a friend. His passion was problem solving, using math and engineering to calculate the support necessary for an art installation of hanging steel furniture or to estimate the space needed to safely maneuver large groups of people between glass sculptures.