I stopped for a coffee before paying.

  “Quite the eclectic basket you’ve got here,” the checkout clerk said. He was cheerful and soft and of indeterminate age, somewhere between twenty-five and forty. But his smile was contagious, even this early in the morning.

  He scanned the hook-and-eye lock, rang up the coffee I’d just poured myself beside the counter.

  “Hey, it’s your store,” I said. I, too, made no excuses.

  He laughed once, loud and sharp, then paused at the liquor, looked from the bottle label to me, then back. “ID?”

  I pulled it from my wallet, and he took it from my hand, squinting.

  Something fell in the aisle behind me. The sound of boxes tumbling off their stack. I turned, smiling, expecting to see Sydney, clumsy with fatigue. How you can get with lack of sleep. Disoriented. Slow to react. But instead I saw a man in jeans and a short-sleeved button-down, ball cap on, tuck himself away behind the spinning rack of chips.

  My smile fell, my shoulders tensed.

  I thought, from the way he seemed to be watching, that maybe it was someone I knew. But there was something else. A long-cultivated instinct.

  It was the way he was standing—half-hidden—that made my skin prickle. The way he turned back to the chips, spinning the rack but looking at nothing. A feeling I hadn’t gotten in a long time: a feeling that meant they were looking for me.

  It made sense: On the ten-year anniversary a decade earlier, the journalists had come out of the woodwork. In supermarket aisles, outside the high school entrance, resting against the side of our neighbor’s house. Manifesting from structures all over town like something out of a horror movie.

  I’d been sixteen, a junior in high school. I saw my English teacher interviewed on the news, saying I was a good kid, a solid student, a little quiet, but who could blame me. My mom went on a talk show—it was an offer we couldn’t turn down, she said, though I refused to join her. They showed our new house on the news. Blurred out the numbers, as if that mattered. Used my picture from the yearbook.

  I received letters of every type, from every sort of person, for the next six months.

  We were praying for you—

  Wow, you grew up nice—

  Think you can just ignore the people who helped you, ungrateful bitch—

  It was part of the reason we’d moved again—this time to Ohio. Part of the reason I’d changed my name. So I could start fresh as an adult. Enter college as someone new. The gift of being a person with no history.

  The twenty-year anniversary was less than two months away. Would there be more media coverage, regardless of whether they tracked me down? Was it still of public interest, all these years later?

  “Have a good day, Olivia,” the clerk said, pulling my attention. My ID was in his outstretched hand. I slid it back into my wallet, then peered over my shoulder again, but the man was gone.

  “Thanks,” I said to the clerk, keeping my head down as I strode for the automatic-exit doors.

  He was there. Outside, waiting. Leaning against a blue car parked next to mine. Unwrapping, on the hood of his car, a breakfast sandwich that didn’t seem like it had come from the store. “Hey,” he said, all nonchalant, taking a bite. Taking his time.

  The lot was otherwise empty. I unlocked the door, but kept the keys in my hand, an old instinct rising.

  He chewed and swallowed, pointing his sandwich at me. “I know you,” he said.

  “Don’t think so,” I said. He had the air of a journalist, if not the look. Not the clothes and not the car, from what I was accustomed to. But the way of casually lingering, pretending he hadn’t been waiting just for me.

  “Olivia, right?”

  I was already shutting the driver’s-side door. Mentally working through the moves to escape, tallying the seconds to get away. The time to start my car and accelerate out of the lot versus the time it would take him to do the same—and follow. I didn’t second-guess myself. I’d been born with a healthy dose of self-preservation, and I’d learned to trust my gut.

  In my rush to leave, I didn’t give him another glance. Couldn’t say what he looked like if asked, other than: guy, white, average height and build. Perhaps he’d known my name to start, or perhaps he’d just overheard the clerk inside.

  Whatever he was after, I didn’t have to speak—I knew that by now.

  But how easily he could topple everything I’d built. The comfort of anonymity. All that I’d run from in Widow Hills. Here, the scars just scars—surgery after an accident, I always said, and that wasn’t a lie. My name was my legal name now. I stuck to the truth: Moved here from Ohio for college; fell out of touch with my family; came into some money when I was younger.

  None of these things were lies.

  People tended to fill in the blanks however they wanted. It was not my job to correct them.

  TRANSCRIPT FROM LIVE INTERVIEW

  OCTOBER 18, 2000

  Yes, I found her on my porch once. I worked the six a.m. shift that day, had to leave just after five. My dog was barking, and it was still dark when I opened the door, but there she was. I remember I said, “Honey? Is your mom okay?” Because I couldn’t remember her name.

  She turned around and walked back home. I didn’t realize she was sleeping.

  I wish I’d told someone, but I didn’t know.

  STUART GOSS

  Resident of Widow Hills

  CHAPTER 4

  Friday, 8 a.m.

  THERE WERE MANY BENEFITS to working in a hospital, in theory. Access to doctors and nurses, a behind-the-scenes look at how things worked, personal connections to book an appointment last-minute.

  But what you gained in accessibility, you lost in privacy. Since I’d been with Central Valley Hospital, I visited doctors less, not more. The times I’d been sick, I’d stopped at the Minute Clinic instead. The doctors and nurses were people I saw every day. And I’d have to give a medical history, a personal history. I shuddered at the possibility of old details somehow making it into their system. Where they might notice that my arm had to be reconstructed and then fixed again as I grew, that there was a lack of full mobility due to the buildup of scar tissue around my shoulder. Where they might wonder why.

  After the story ended, after the fade to black, these were the things that didn’t fit onto their carefully constructed page: the trauma of surgeries; the long process of recovery; the questions from the curious; the feeling of always, always being watched.

  All I needed was a sleeping aid, possibly, to keep me in deep sleep. An easy remedy. Harmless.

  The entrance to the hospital looked like a rich but rustic hotel, with log-cabin beams crisscrossing the walkway to the entrance. In the front, there was a greenway with a walking path and benches for employees and visitors to take lunch breaks.

  I always parked in the back lot, partly to avoid the ER entrance and the corresponding waiting area. Bennett called me a germaphobe, but I had good cause: When I first started working here, I promptly got sick—a virulent virus I was sure would kill me. Or, at the very least, force me to never eat again.

  Everyone said I’d build up immunity over time, but it hadn’t happened. That first winter, I’d come down with bronchitis, with a cough so vicious I’d bruised a rib. Since then: strep, something viral, a rash with no origin.

  I still kept hand sanitizer in my bottom drawer. Stayed three feet away from visitors to avoid a handshake.

  Bennett said I made people nervous, but I hadn’t gotten sick since.

  That’s because you’ve built up immunity, he’d said. But I wasn’t willing to risk it.

  Mostly, though, I came in through the back to be closer to the stairs and bypass the elevator, my least favorite technological advancement. Sliding doors, one way out, a steel box. I avoided the opportunity to take an elevator whenever possible, steering clear of small spaces for the obvious reasons.

  From the back entrance, the only signs of life at this time of day were from the gift shop, a family of three clustered near the glass entrance, balloon in a child’s hand. I could smell breakfast coming from the cafeteria down the hall, but it was quiet before the breakfast rush.

  When I unlocked the door from the third-floor stairwell, my hall appeared vacant. The wing was closed to patients, accessible only through a keypad beside a swinging set of doors at one end, or a key from the back stairs. This was less because of the offices and more because of the nurses’ lounge and medicine room.

  It was early enough that most of the administration hadn’t yet checked in for the day, but still, it was hard to tell. People moved quietly. Everyone wore rubber-soled sneakers or clogs, and I’d adopted the same—because I was the only one you could hear coming, and I found my own presence unnerving.

  My office was halfway down the hall, but turn the corner and you’d hit the nurses’ lounge and the central medicine room placed strategically across the way. I could see shadows passing quickly underneath the double doors at the other end of the hall, where the patients were.

  I stopped just outside the lounge, peering through the small rectangular window, listening to the silence. A woman with curly auburn hair, her back to me, was reading something on her phone. The lounge was open to nurses in every department, but she was not someone I recognized; not someone who would know me.

  Then I stepped backward across the hall to the medicine room. I held my breath as I eased my elbow down on the handle, feeling it give.

  We didn’t have the tightest security, and I should know. I was on the original committee that helped determine need versus cost effectiveness, and we didn’t have a whole lot of cash coming in. A new security system was low on the list. We had guards in the ER and police on call. But we were a lot more lax upstairs, especially because of the keypads sealing off the restricted areas. People weren’t consistent about locking the outside door to the medicine room because the drawers themselves were locked and accessible only by code, and it was a pain to do both. Part of my role was uncovering and slashing areas of redundancy.

  I kept the lights off now, checking out the boxes in the cabinets that lined the walls. While the pharmacy kept strict regulations on the inventory, I knew that the boxes of samples from pharma reps ended up scattered haphazardly in the cabinets above, alongside the non-drug-related equipment—tubes and gauze and needles.

  Anyway, if the medicine wasn’t locked up, I assumed, it wasn’t a danger. There must be some sort of generic sleep aid in the mix. Something to knock me out and keep me that way. Reset my internal clock and my sense of stability.

  The first cabinet seemed to contain mostly topical ointments and creams. I opened the second, moving boxes around, looking for something that sounded relevant. The labels I could discern highlighted acid reflux, generic painkillers, and allergy treatments. The words were hard to read in the dark, and I leaned closer to see the containers hidden at the back of the cabinet.

  The door swung open behind me with no warning, and I pulled back so fast that I scraped the side of my hand against the wooden frame of the cabinet.

  It was my reaction that gave me away. My heart racing, my feet frozen. Bennett stood in the doorway; he let the door swing shut, flipping the light. He blinked twice, and I looked down, trying to adjust to the sudden glare.

  “What are you doing here, Liv?”

  Bennett Shaw was my closest friend at the hospital. Though I didn’t have many long-term friendships throughout my past to compare it to, after more than two years of working on the same hall, of regular lunches and semi-regular dinners, I thought he probably considered me the same. He’d even invited me back to his childhood home in Charlotte for Thanksgiving last year, had said he had a big family, that they wouldn’t even notice the extra seat taken.

  He was also a stickler for rules, a man bound by ethics. In medicine, you have to be. There are consequences for missing something, for forgetting, for being late. There are lives in the balance. Concerned more with the logistics of keeping the hospital staffed and the money flowing in the right direction, I had the luxury of removal. If I fell behind, I could catch up. If I sent the wrong information, I could apologize and resend. No mistake was permanent.

  Usually, I loved how Bennett adhered to the rules. When you grow up with a lack of predictability, structure feels like a blessing. I knew what to expect of him and what he expected of me.

  “Please tell me this isn’t what it looks like.” He took a step closer. I could tell by his voice—deeper, quieter—that he was upset, and I needed to head it off.

  “I’m not sleeping,” I said. It was something I thought he would understand.

  His volume only grew. “Melatonin. A glass of wine. A hot bath. Take your pick. Just get the fuck out of here.”

  I shook my head. “It’s more than that. They’re just samples, right?” A play on naïveté, but he wasn’t having it.

  He stepped to the side, arms crossed. Waiting for me to leave. “So talk to Cal,” he said as I pushed through the door.

  “Who the fuck is Cal?” I asked, but he’d already pulled the door shut between us, leaving me in a shaky haze, wondering what I had just done.

  * * *

  I’D BEEN STUCK IN meetings all morning, but I kept peeking into the nurses’ lounge every time I passed by. I hadn’t seen Bennett since he’d found me in the medicine room. Each time I replayed the scene in my head, it grew worse.

  The dread in my gut was stewing—what would he think; what would he say; what would he do? He was the nurses’ shift supervisor, and I was the wing administrator, comparable roles in different chains of authority. We ended up collaborating frequently, but we reported up separate ladders. Bennett had started working here just a few months after the hospital opened, four years back. He’d seen it develop from the ground up and had a strong investment in its success.

  He could report me. That was his job.

  I busied myself at my desk by looking up this “Cal” on the personnel database, trying to see where Bennett was directing me. I eventually landed on a name that made sense: Dr. Calvin Royce, specializing in sleep disorders. His bio and credentials were listed beside a directory photo.

  “Jesus,” I said out loud. I was glad I’d seen his face before running into him somewhere, so I could desensitize myself first. He was almost unnaturally good-looking.

  There was a faint knock on my door. “Come on in,” I called.

  The first thing I saw was a cup of coffee, then an arm extended through the doorway. “I come in peace,” he said before pushing the door fully ajar.

  My shoulders relaxed for the first time all morning. Bennett set the coffee on my desk and fell onto the sofa against the wall. He’d helped me move it in here in exchange for his unlimited usage. He said he preferred the quiet of my office to the lounge. I rarely locked my office—there was enough security at either end of the wing as it was—so I’d often find him sleeping here, his long legs hanging over the armrest, one arm folded over his eyes, until his watch faintly beeped and he sat straight up like a vampire rising from the dead.

  I swiveled the monitor in his direction, my own act of contrition.

  He raised one eyebrow. “You’re really not sleeping.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

  He rubbed his palm down his narrow face. Sharp cheekbones, sloped chin, light brown hair, and hazel eyes. When he was clean-shaven, he always got carded when we were out. Patients sometimes complained and requested an adult, though I knew he was almost thirty.

  Looking at Bennett, it wasn’t hard to picture the child he once was. It was right there, close to the surface, and he embraced it. Didn’t try to dress it up in suits and facial hair. He was the youngest of five siblings and was accustomed to being viewed that way. I knew, even though I’d declined the Thanksgiving visit. He talked about his family constantly, whereas I tried at each opportunity to distance myself from the child I’d once been.

  The most distinct feature, in the photos, on the news, had been that head of wavy brown hair, disproportionate on my small frame. So I’d highlighted the color to almost-blond ever since college, had blown it straight each morning. Every year older was another layer of removal between me and that girl. Until this morning, I’d thought she was unrecognizable. I’d thought I had made it, that my real life was now beginning.

  “Me, too,” he said. “I overreacted. But things have been going missing from there, and…” A gesture of his hand. “Sorry I jumped to conclusions.” An accusation directed at someone else now.

  “I get it, it looked bad.”

  “Obviously, if you were trying to take something worth anything, you’d be in the locked drawers. Not the free shit.”

  “I’ll make a note,” I said, then pointed at the screen. “But this? Is this a joke?”

  He smirked. “Dr. Cal. That’s what he likes to be called, FYI. Or at least that’s what everyone calls him in the lounge. Just don’t make direct eye contact, and you’ll be fine.”

  I wasn’t sure exactly where Bennett’s sexual attraction lay, only that it wasn’t with me. He was remarkably close-lipped about his personal life, which was part of the allure of a place like this. We could bring our history with us in the diplomas on the walls, or choose to keep our pasts to ourselves. We existed in the present. We looked to the future.

  “What sort of deal with the devil does it take to be a doctor and look like this? And why have I never heard of him before?” I asked.

  “Because you’re not in the lounge,” he said. “Trust me. He was all anyone could talk about for weeks. Just started last month.”

  Which was probably why I hadn’t heard of him yet; he hadn’t shown up in any reports. A new hire also meant a decent chance of me getting in with a quick appointment.

  “So, I’ll see you out tonight, right?” he asked, standing to leave.

  I looked at him head-on. Bennett worked Saturdays, and he typically passed on the Friday-evening activities. Or refused to commit, occasionally dropped by for a quick drink before claiming he had to head home. Though from the way he checked his phone throughout the night, I sometimes assumed he was heading somewhere better. If I teased him about it—Hot date? Better offer?—he’d only smile. He basked in the mystery—and in my fury—like it was a game.