“Was there a message?” I asked.

“Nope, nothing.”

I shivered. I’d heard those calls coming through as I stood over Sean Coleman’s body. The ringing of the phone waking me. Someone had been calling him just as I’d found him. It was probably what had dragged me back to consciousness.

“Do you . . . When you first got here, did you ever think it was me?” I asked. Other people must have. Detective Rigby, even Rick. Maybe that was why Nathan told me things, to judge my reaction.

He took another drink, resettled into the cushions, buying time.

“Well, I’m looking at you, at your arms, your neck, and I don’t see how it could be.” I felt his gaze on me as he spoke. “I can’t imagine my dad went down without any sort of fight. Not someone his size compared to your size, unless you snuck up on him—and it seems like he was the one sneaking around. What I’m saying is, based on logic, I don’t think so. You don’t strike me as the type.”

I nodded, though I was thinking: Not unless I felt trapped, cornered. Then, subconsciously, and truthfully, I couldn’t say for sure what type of person I’d become.

His fingers brushed my hair, pushing it back—I wasn’t sure how he could be this close and still be sitting on the other side of the couch. “No,” he said, “I don’t think it was you.”

It was the logic that I hoped others saw as well. I looked back at him, thinking I was fortunate to have him here now. “I can’t believe, after all the press, I didn’t know Sean Coleman had a son. I never heard . . .” I trailed off, because I hadn’t gone searching. The stories had always come to me, whether I wanted them or not.

“It wasn’t the same for us as it was for you,” he said.

“I wish I’d met you sooner.” It would’ve been nice to connect to someone tangentially attached to the story. Who understood, like I did, how you could become a list of facts, a new persona crafted from public information. One that felt both familiar and unknowable—but one that others would view you as, all the same.

Sitting beside him now, I wanted to get lost in something, to forget, to have him tell me what he wanted from me and what to expect in return. His hand was in my hair, and I started to lean in to him, then stopped. Even now I was second-guessing myself. My motives, my intentions. I wasn’t sure whether I was trying to prove something to myself and others: that if Nathan Coleman believed me, and liked me, then it could not have been me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Can I just—have a minute? I need to wash my face or something. I feel like I’m a mess right now.”

“You’re not,” he said with a sad smile. But he dropped his hand from the side of my face. “Bathroom’s through there. Please excuse the mess.” He pointed to the closed bedroom door.

I let myself in, partly closing the bedroom door behind me. The volume of the television increased, and I could hear the news anchors discussing the latest figures in the opioid epidemic.

Inside, the bed was made, and the bathroom was tucked around the corner, past the closet. There was no mess to speak of, other than the towels hanging from the shower rod and a toiletry case on the sink counter. The sink and vanity were just outside the bathroom, across from the double sliding mirrored closet doors.

I splashed water on my face, then looked for a face towel. The only ones I could see were currently hanging over the shower rod in the bathroom. I used my sleeve to dry the excess water, then turned to the closet behind me, where I’d usually find extra blankets and towels in hotel rooms everywhere.

Sliding one of the doors aside, I immediately found the towels, stacked on a high shelf. None of Nathan’s clothes were hung up yet. I found this quirk endearing; you could tell a lot about someone by the state of their things kept out of sight.

His suitcase was propped open on a stand instead. He wasn’t kidding about staying for a while—there appeared to be enough clothes to last more than a week. His laptop was in a case on the left, on top of a stack of folded shirts. His leather jacket lay on top of the other half of the suitcase. I ran my hand over it, wondering whether I could know enough about a person after a handful of days to trust him with the things I had told him.

My gut said yes. He was someone who could understand. But the events of the last few days had me disoriented, not sure whether I could trust even myself, let alone others. That article had sent me reeling—someone at my job had talked. Who else would be giving a statement in the coming days?

I was sure Bennett had looked around my house while organizing, and now I wasn’t sure what he’d been searching for. Elyse might’ve, too—someone had gone through my closet, after all. I could see her finding that bracelet and sliding it onto her wrist, not knowing what it meant to me, before Bennett showed up.

I picked up the leather coat, brought it to my face: I loved the scent. It reminded me of the first time I saw him, with his sunglasses on, standing beside Detective Rigby outside my house.

Underneath the jacket, there was a manila folder, a file of papers bound up inside a rubber band. My hands started to shake. I wondered if this was information about the investigation. Things Detective Rigby had told him but not me. Details that could set me free.

I peered around the corner, could see Nathan sitting on the sofa through the crack in the door. I unwound the rubber band, gently opening the file.

The first thing I saw was that article from earlier today, the one he’d claimed he hadn’t seen—but must have recently printed out.

I turned it over, and I didn’t understand, my mind desperate to catch up.

It was a news transcript dated from twenty years earlier. From the day I went missing—the press conference, asking for the public’s assistance.

Behind that, more transcripts: witness interviews, weather reports, information on the drainage system. My hands kept shaking as I turned page after page. Transcripts from the live reports the day I was found, and the 911 calls made by my mother—and others. Articles from the ten-year anniversary. Letters marked Return to Sender, with a Lexington, Kentucky, postmark.

He had lied.

Nathan had known exactly who I was from the start.

“Olivia?” he called, and I dropped the papers on the suitcase. “You all right?”

“One sec!” I called back, running the water.

Then I fumbled for my phone, took photo after photo of everything in this stack. I didn’t understand why he had all of this, what it meant.

When I got to the envelopes, I looked inside, read the warnings, the threats. We had received so many after the ten-year anniversary—so many, we’d had to move. Had these bounced back after our move? They had been sent from Lexington, Kentucky. Wasn’t that where he and his mother had lived?

I had made a mistake. Nathan Coleman was not at all who I thought. Behind the letters, there was even more: articles, photos of my old house, a map of Widow Hills . . . like a long-running obsession.

There I was, a story in pieces, out of context, filed in chronological order.

What the hell was he doing with this?

I wondered then whether this was what Sean Coleman had been trying to warn me about with his letter: his son.

“Do you need something?” Nathan’s voice was closer, just outside the door.