He was so close, and I couldn’t see how to get by him, get to safety, get through this moment. My skin itched, and I scratched at my neck. I couldn’t breathe, like the walls were closing in. “My shoulder, my arm, they were hurt. The injuries, they were left untreated for days.” Proof of what had happened. Proof that I’d survived something.

His eyes followed my hand at my neck, then drifted to my arm. “Did you ever wonder what someone might do to cover up something else?”

I shook my head. Heard Emma’s words echoing, what that doctor had said: The injury was weird. And Bennett’s comment—that the pain must’ve been terrible.

Nathan could see it in me, the doubt setting in, though I tried to fight it. “They take kids away from homes like that.”

“I used to sleepwalk,” I said, clinging to the facts.

He shrugged. “Then what a convenient story, right? Something to say instead? She was a nurse. She would know what to do, what to say . . .”

But I was shaking my head. Could not fathom the idea. Because we were survivors.

We have to seize the opportunities, she’d told me.

The 911 call, when she’d told the dispatcher that I was gone. That I would sleepwalk. That I was missing. That she’d already checked outside.

And then, minutes later, running outside and screaming for me while Stuart Goss was on his own call.

Like a cause and effect. Like she had an excuse and now had to put on a show.

“They searched for three days!” I said. “I was trapped under here. They had to drill a hole to get to me.” A sharp intake of breath as I fought to keep control, but he could see it, so close to the surface, the unraveling of everything I’d known to be true.

“Sure, you were under there on day three. That doesn’t mean you were there the whole time.”

This was my mother’s fault. Perpetuating the story of what she wanted to believe. Of course I hadn’t been hanging on the whole time I was down there. I’d been trapped, and I’d made my way to the grate. It wasn’t a secret. It didn’t change what had happened to me.

I was shaking my head, eyes closed, clinging to the memory—of the cold and the dark, the four walls closing in.

“Listen,” he said, and he was so close now there was nothing else to do but comply, his body dwarfing mine. “It’s the twenty-year anniversary. Do you know how big a story this could be? All you have to do is remember. All you have to do is say you remember.”

And there it was, what he wanted still. I was a commodity. Something to cash in. A piece of someone else’s story to be used for their benefit.

“It could be a good story. A big story. You and me, twenty-year anniversary. Revealing the truth about what really happened. All I need is for you to say it’s true.”

But I would not. I could not.

“The one thing I remember is being trapped. I remember that.” An instinct in place of a memory. The fear and the emptiness. And now it mattered. It proved my past was real.

“I’ll make you a deal, Arden.” He’d switched to my first name, probably how he’d thought about me for years. He looked somewhere over my head, made a noise with his tongue. “Go take a tour of your old house. Knock on the door, introduce yourself, I’m sure they’ll let you in.”

I could barely remember the house at all; even the outside was mostly unfamiliar. Had he been inside? Had he sneaked in, looked around on his own?

“And then,” he said, standing closer, “take those wooden stairs into the unfinished basement. Look behind the furnace for a low hidden door. Go ahead and peek inside that cinder-block room with the dripping water pipe. And then you tell me if that looks familiar.”

“Stop,” I said. Because I could feel my hands tracing over the cold rocks, the stagnant water, the darkness and no way out.

“And if you’re still sure then, I’ll leave it alone. What do you say?”

My stomach plummeted, the images fracturing and shifting. “It won’t. No.”

“Arden, I need you to fucking remember,” he said, grabbing my wrist. The hidden anger. “And if you can’t, remember something else. Something your mom said. Or did. Do you know what a talk show would pay? What a book could get us? This is the moment, Arden.”

I’d heard that before, from my mother. When she’d tried to convince me of the same on the ten-year anniversary.

But look what it had gotten us. A man stalking me. Demanding money. He didn’t know the type of attention we got, what he was trying to throw himself into so quickly. How they would pick apart his life, literally, piece by piece.

“It’s a thing that happened to me, and it hasn’t been a story that’s belonged to me in a long time,” I said.

“It happened to all of us,” he hissed, hands on my upper arms. “You’re just too selfish to see that. People made it happen—the search and rescue, all the money that poured into it. You owe me this.” He shook me once, and I felt my bones rattle.

I raised my arms to dislodge his grip. His eyes caught on the keys in my fist. “Are you going to hurt me, Arden? With your keys?” A twinkle in his eye, and I knew right then: There would be no reasoning, no escape.

Nathan Coleman was a man who got what he wanted. I was right from the start.

“Did you kill your father?” I asked, looking at his hands gripped on my arms.

He stared at me hard. “I’m not a monster,” he said. Then he released me, as if he realized his mistake. The line he’d just crossed and was in danger of plummeting over. “I wanted his help, but he didn’t want to give it. I never needed him for this, though.” A deep breath. “I didn’t even know he was there.”

But he was a liar.

“I really do like you,” he said. “I didn’t think I would. You surprised me.”

I knew that he wanted what I represented, wanted the life I had. There was a fine line between envy and hatred, between intimidation and aggression, a line you can slide across so easily—from omissions to lies.

“I have a second story, and it’s a good one, too, Arden,” he said slowly. “The story of how my father came to you, wanting you to share the truth. And you killed him.”

“I didn’t.” Box cutter in my drawer; blood on my hands.

“Really, now. You can tell me.”

I could see then that he was not only angry but desperate. Desperate people did terrible things. I could feel myself on the verge. When I was cornered, when I felt trapped.

I closed my eyes, pictured a box cutter in my hand, the thing I could get to the quickest.

What if Sean had asked me for help; what if he’d kept talking, kept moving, and I couldn’t see a way out?

What if I’d run outside and he’d chased me? What if he’d grabbed me by the wrist? What if I’d caught him off guard, in one quick motion?

“Jesus, Arden. You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Come on.” He grabbed me by the elbow, drew me close to his side, pulling me along as we walked.

But we were walking farther into the woods. Away from civilization, away from escape. “Where—”

“The river. I’m gonna show you the other access points. I’m gonna show you what really happened to you.”