Chapter 3

On the eighth day, Daisy spoke completely.

I was reading, she wasn't listening, both of us pretending. I turned a page and said, without looking up, "Do you want the wolf to win?"

A small voice said, "No."

I didn't move. I didn't breathe. Eyes on the page like a woman defusing something.

"Okay," I said. "Then he doesn't."

The moment Silas learned his daughter could talk, his knees went weak. He actually had to grab the table to stand steady. He turned away in a panic to wipe his tears.

I coldly used that split second to thoroughly search the nursery mattress.

Deep inside the slit of the mattress, I found a badly worn plastic bag.

Inside lay nine faded paper stars, an old band from a children's hospital, and a yellowed photograph.

The second I saw the photo under the nightlight, my blood froze.

A courtyard. Chain-link, a swing set with one swing. The flat gray of a cheap camera in late afternoon.

In the middle of the frame a young woman crouched down, and a very small girl held her hand with both of her hands, the way you hold something in a current.

The girl was Daisy. Four years old, maybe. Thinner. Her mouth open, mid-word.

The woman was me.

My hair was long then. I stopped wearing it long when I was twenty-two.

I know that coat. I put it in a donation bin outside a laundromat on Ninth Street six years ago because the pocket tore and I couldn't be bothered to sew it.

I was a top-tier nanny who remembered exactly how many cars every household had and what medications they used. Yet, there was not a single trace of this memory in my mind.

I flipped the photo over. On the back, an unfamiliar handwriting had pierced through the paper with a fountain pen:

"She said, this is the one."

In the dark, Daisy had opened her eyes at some point. She was sitting up in bed, looking at me, her voice crisp and clear.

"You're finally back."