Adrian left for the office at seven-thirty.

By seven thirty-five, I was on my knees in the library, pulling every photo album off the bottom shelf.

There were six of them. Leather covers. Dated spines. Somebody had labeled each one by hand.

I opened the first.

Me, at a black grand piano on the Westbrook auditorium stage, eyes closed, fingers blurred mid-chord.

Me and Adrian on a boardwalk, sharing one cone of strawberry ice cream. I had pink on my nose. He was laughing at it.

Me in the bleachers at a football game, swimming in a navy varsity jacket. VALE stitched across the back.

Me on my tiptoes, fixing his tie.

My hands started to shake. Not from fear. From rage.

"Clever," I whispered. "Really clever."

Photos could be staged. Faces could be edited. A man with his money could build any past he wanted.

I carried the albums downstairs, all six, and dumped them onto the living room rug. One cracked open on impact. A picture slid out face-up. Me, smiling.

"Mrs. Delgado!"

The housekeeper hurried in from the kitchen, drying her hands on her apron. She stopped when she saw the pile.

"Miss Mara?"

"Burn them."

"I'm sorry?"

"The fireplace. The incinerator. I don't care. I want them gone before he gets home."

She didn't move. Her eyes went to the photo on the rug, and her chin trembled.

"I've worked here five years," she said. "Mr. Vale never let anyone throw those away. Not one picture. Not even the blurry ones."

"Then he's sentimental about his props."

"They're not props, miss." Her eyes had gone red at the rims. "He takes them out on your birthday. Every year. He sits right there and looks at them until it gets dark."

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

So I grabbed my car keys instead.

---

Westbrook Prep looked wrong.

The old brick building was gone. In its place stood glass and steel and a lobby that smelled like new carpet. The hallway walls held framed portraits of distinguished graduates.

And beside the main stairwell, a bronze plaque of donors.

*The Vale Family Foundation.*

Right at the top.

"Of course," I muttered.

I followed my feet more than any map. They took me down a back corridor to where the junior lockers used to be.

The lockers were gone. Just a long wall, painted a soft, cheerful yellow.

I touched it.

*Look at her. She's gonna cry.*

Laughter. Loud. Close. Behind me.

I spun. The hallway was empty.

*Pick them up, freak. Go on.*

Books hit the floor in my memory. Pages tore under sneakers. A circle of bodies closed in, shoulders and elbows and grinning mouths, and I couldn't find the gap to get out.

I ran.

The girls' restroom was three doors down. I shoved through it, cranked the faucet, and shoved my left wrist under the water. I scrubbed the scar with my thumb. Then with my nails. Then with soap, again and again, until the skin went raw and pink.

*Knock, knock.*

"Hon? You okay in there?"

I froze, water still running.

The door creaked. An older woman in a gray uniform peeked in, a mop cart behind her.

"You need some help?"

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine." Her gaze dropped to the counter, where I'd set my bag. The old Westbrook yearbook stuck out of it. I'd brought it as proof. She tilted her head. Then she looked at my face again. Really looked.

"Well, I'll be." She smiled slowly. "Mara. The piano girl."

My stomach turned over.

"You don't know me."

"Sure I do. I've cleaned this wing for twenty years. You and the Vale boy, you were glued together. He carried your music folders. Waited outside the practice rooms until all hours." She chuckled. "Half the girls here would've traded their own mothers for a boy like that."

"That's a lie."

Her smile wobbled. "Honey—"

"How much did they pay you?" I yanked a paper towel from the dispenser and pressed it hard against my wrist. "Did his family send you a check? Did he tell you I'd come?"

She stepped back, hurt flashing across her face.

"Nobody paid me anything," she said quietly. "I just remember you smiling. That's all."

I pushed past her and didn't stop until I reached the car.

---

Dinner was salmon and white wine. I didn't touch either.

"I went to Westbrook today," I said.

Adrian set down his fork. Carefully. Like the table might break.

"How was it?"

"A janitor told me we were the school's golden couple. Inseparable. Everyone jealous." I sliced my salmon into smaller and smaller pieces. "Nice touch. Did you pay her before or after you funded the new building?"

He didn't argue.

He didn't even defend himself.

"I have the prom video," he said. "Would you watch it with me?"

"No."

"Mara—"

"No. I don't want another movie you produced." I dropped the knife. It clattered against the plate. "I want you to explain one thing. Just one. Why do I look so happy in those pictures?"

He was quiet for a long time. The grandfather clock in the hall ticked through it.

"Because you were," he said at last.

I stared at him.

"You were happy." His voice went low and rough. "And the biggest regret of my life is that I couldn't make it last."

Something in my chest snapped.

"Don't." I shoved my chair back. "Don't you dare use some pretty version of the past to cover what you did. You don't get to hand me old photos and pretend the bruises never happened."

I twisted the ring off my finger. It caught on my knuckle. I pulled harder.

Then I threw it.

It bounced off the fireplace screen and dropped into the potted fern beside the hearth. A tiny thud in the dirt.

Adrian looked at the plant. He didn't get up.

He looked back at me instead.

"You can leave this house," he said. "Tonight, if you want. You can cancel the wedding. You can never see me again."

His jaw set. Then it eased.

"But don't you ever believe you have no choice just because I have money. You always have a choice, Mara. Always."

I'd come ready for a fight. For threats. For him to remind me who owned the roof over my head.

Not this.

For one second, the anger slipped, and something underneath it shifted. Something small and scared and uncertain.

I turned around before he could see it.

"Goodnight, Adrian."

---

I didn't sleep.

Around two, I opened the nightstand drawer for my sleeping pills. Instead my fingers brushed a stiff slip of paper.

A concert ticket. Faded ink. *Lincoln Center — Young Artists Showcase.* And a date. A date I knew in my bones, though I couldn't say why.

The day I was supposed to become a pianist.

I flipped it over.

Adrian's handwriting again. Neat and blue.

*No matter what stage she ends up on, I'll be sitting in the front row.*

"Liar," I hissed.

I tore it in half.

The paper split unevenly. One half peeled apart at the edge, two thin layers glued together. I pinched it, ready to crumple it and toss it in the trash.

Then I saw the red.

Hidden between the layers. Tiny, slanted letters. Not Adrian's.

Not anyone's I knew.

*That night, the person who really hurt her still hasn't been found.*

Three days before the wedding, the Vale family threw me an engagement dinner I never asked for.

The estate sat on the edge of the Long Island shore, all white columns and ocean wind. Inside, a crystal chandelier the size of a small car hung over two hundred guests. Wall Street bankers. Family board members. And worse, faces I knew from Westbrook.

The gown was champagne silk. It had belonged to Adrian's grandmother.

"It's tradition," his aunt Philippa had said that afternoon, zipping me into it herself. "Every Vale bride wears it. You'll smile, won't you, dear?"

I didn't.

Now I stood under the chandelier while people studied me like a stock they weren't sure about.

"So you're the girl." A man with a silver tie gripped my hand too long. "Adrian kept you hidden for years. What do you do, Mara?"

I waited for Adrian to answer for me.

He didn't. He stood at my shoulder, close enough that I could feel his warmth, and said nothing.

"I'm an archivist," I said. "At a small museum in Brooklyn."

"How charming."

A woman in pearls leaned in. Westbrook, class of my year. I remembered her laugh. I didn't remember her name.

"You'll quit after the wedding, of course," she said. "Nobody runs a household like this part-time."

Every head in the circle turned toward Adrian.

He took a sip of his water. Then he set the glass down.

"Mara can do whatever she wants," he said.

That was it. No speech. No smile for the crowd.

Uncle Gordon cleared his throat from across the room. He was the oldest Vale on the board, and he had a voice built for boardrooms.

"Adrian. The future lady of this family doesn't get to be whimsical. There are expectations."

A murmur rolled through the guests. Somebody laughed into a champagne flute.

My palms went damp. My throat closed up. For one second I was seventeen again, standing in a ring of grinning mouths.

Then I saw the microphone on the stand by the string quartet.

I walked over and picked it up. The feedback squealed. Two hundred faces winced and turned toward me.

"Thank you all for coming," I said. My voice shook, so I held the mic tighter. "I want to clear something up. I'm marrying a man. Not a board. I don't need anyone's approval to live my life."

Silence.

Then Celeste Moreau, of all people, started clapping near the dessert table. A few others joined in. Uncle Gordon's mouth pinched shut.

When I came back, Adrian was looking at me. Not with pride. With something closer to relief.

"What?" I muttered.

"Nothing," he said. "You just sounded like yourself."

Before I could ask what that meant, the room changed.

People stepped aside. A woman in black velvet came through the crowd, dark hair pulled back, red lips, Adrian's eyes.

Sloane Vale.

My stomach dropped. In my memory, she was the one who held the phone up while the milk ran down my face. The one who laughed loudest.

She stopped in front of me. She didn't laugh.

"Mara," she said. "Do you really remember the last summer of senior year?"

The guests went quiet again.

"Excuse me?"

"The summer. Do you remember it?"

"I remember enough." My voice rose. "Why do you care? Seven years and you show up now, playing worried? Is this part of the show too?"

Her eyes went red at the rims, fast, like she'd been holding it back for a long time.

But she lifted her chin.

"You can hate me," she said. "You probably should. But at least figure out who you're actually hating."

She pulled a small photo out of her clutch.

I caught a glimpse. Me, younger, outside the Westbrook music room door. Next to me, a girl I didn't know. Thin, blond, half turned away. And in my hand, a letter. I was holding it so hard the paper had crumpled.

"Sloane." Uncle Gordon's voice cut across the room. "A word. Now."

She flinched. Then she grabbed my hand and shoved the photo into it, folding my fingers over it.

"Don't lose it," she whispered.

And she was gone.

---

I found her on the terrace after the last guests had left. The wind off the water tugged at her velvet sleeves.

"You don't get to walk away," I said. "Explain."

She didn't turn around. "I did things to you that you'll never forgive. I know that. I'm not here to ask you to."

"Then what are you here for?"

"Because some of what you remember wasn't us." She faced me. "The worst parts. That wasn't me. And it wasn't Adrian."

I laughed. It came out like a cough.

"That's convenient. So now there's a mystery villain? Some stranger did it, and the Vale kids are innocent?"

"I didn't say innocent."

"You're blaming someone else because it's easier than saying sorry."

"Then answer me one thing." Her voice dropped, steady and quiet. "When you think about that year, you remember the smell of the milk. Right? Sour. You remember the cigarette burning. You can feel it."

My wrist throbbed under my sleeve.

"Yes."

"So how did you leave Westbrook, Mara?"

I opened my mouth.

"Did you graduate? Walk out the front doors? Did someone pick you up? What was the last day like?"

I tried to find it. A cap and gown. A car. A goodbye.

There was nothing. Just white. Like a page someone had erased so hard it tore.

"I..." My mouth went dry. "It doesn't matter."

"It's the only thing that matters."

Footsteps crossed the stone behind me.

"Sloane."

Adrian. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't glare at her.

He came and stood next to me. Not in front. Next to.

My hand was locked around the photo. My nails had dug into my palm so deep it stung.

He glanced down at my fist. Then at his sister.

"That's enough for tonight," he said.

Sloane wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist and nodded once. She left without another word.

---

The car was quiet for twenty minutes. The headlights sliced through the dark highway.

I unclenched my hand. Four small red crescents in my skin. The photo was bent but whole.

"Adrian," I said. "What happened back then?"

His hands tightened on the wheel. He didn't answer.

One exit passed. Then another. I was sure he'd keep quiet the whole way home.

"I can tell you the parts I remember," he said finally. "But I won't decide for you what you have to believe."

He reached across me, opened the glove box, and took out an envelope.

It was old. Sealed. The paper had gone soft at the corners.

The name on the front was mine. In my own handwriting.

The postmark was dated seven years ago. That summer.

"I never opened it," he said. "It wasn't mine to open."

I turned it over. The flap had lifted a little at one corner. Something stuck out.

Half a sheet of music. Hand-copied notes on staff lines.

And I knew that melody. My fingers twitched on my knee, like they were reaching for keys.

Adrian's phone lit up on the dashboard. A Manhattan number.

He tapped speaker.

"Mr. Vale? This is Mount Sinai records department. I'm calling about Dr. Ruth Halloran."

Adrian's jaw went tight.

"She passed away on Tuesday," the woman said. "She left instructions about a patient file. Mara's. It's to be released to her legal guardian of record."

I stared at him.

"Her what?"

The woman went on, unaware. "Our records list you, Mr. Vale. You've held that authority for seven years."