Maya went cold. "That was me. The fever was real. I was actually sick."
"That's how he picked them," Kowalski said grimly. "Sick enough that a transfer wouldn't raise eyebrows. Sick enough that a frantic mother wouldn't question paperwork."
Eleanor's hand found Maya's and held on tight.
Maya stared at the two unfamiliar sets of initials. "Those are people. They're out there somewhere, and they don't know."
"Maybe they do," Susan said. "Maybe their families found them years ago. We don't know anything yet."
"We're going to find out." Eleanor's voice had gone flat and certain. "Whatever it costs. Whatever it takes."
They stood in the dusty unit while Kowalski sealed the ledger into an evidence bag. On the drive back, Susan laid out the reality in the back seat of Eleanor's car.
"Here's what the law can do after twenty-five years," she said. "The honest answer is: less than you want. The forged log is a document, but the clerk who forged it did it to protect a child, not to profit. The orderly with the fake badge was never identified — Kowalski chased a ghost in 2000 and the trail is colder now. Voss is seventy-eight, in assisted living, with documented cognitive decline. A prosecutor will look at this and see a case they can't win and a defendant a jury will pity."
"So he walks," Maya said. "After all of it. He just walks."
"He likely never sees a courtroom," Susan said. "I'm sorry. That's the truth."
"That's not justice," Maya said. "That's just — aging out."
"I know." Susan's voice was gentle, which somehow made it worse. "The law does what it can, Maya. Sometimes what it can do is very small. Which is why Eleanor's idea matters more than a trial. Finding those families — that's real. That's something no statute can take away."
Eleanor's hands tightened on the wheel. "Then we do what's possible."
"Which is?"
"We find the other two." Eleanor glanced in the rearview mirror at Susan. "I will fund it. Investigators, records searches, DNA databases — whatever Kowalski needs. I don't care what it costs."
"Kowalski knows a private investigator he trusts," Susan said. "Ex–Denver PD. Discreet. I'll have a retainer drawn up tomorrow."
Susan nodded slowly. "But Maya — this would be your call too. Those families may not want to be found. You know what it feels like to have the ground move."
Maya looked out the window at the highway sliding past. She thought about the ledger. Three entries. Three line items. Two of them still just initials in a dead man's book.
"Do it," she said. "But I'm not doing this for him." She turned to look at Eleanor. "I'm doing it for them."
Eleanor held her gaze in the mirror for a long moment. Then she nodded, once, and drove on.
In the back seat, Susan was already typing on her phone. "I'll have the retainer drawn up tomorrow," she said. "The investigator Kowalski trusts — I'll brief him myself."
"And the families?" Maya asked.
"We find them quietly," Eleanor said. "No press. No ambush. They get a letter, and they get to choose." She glanced at Maya in the mirror. "Like you did."
Maya nodded. Outside, the highway lights began to flicker on, one by one, against the dark.
Chapter 15: Maya vs. Lily
For three days Maya didn't answer Eleanor's calls. The phone would light up — Eleanor Whitmore — and Maya would turn it face-down and keep doing whatever she was doing, which was mostly nothing.
On the fourth day, Rosa cornered her in the dry-storage room at Ember & Oak.
"Okay," Rosa said, "you don't get to bleed on me because you're scared."
"I'm not bleeding on anyone."
"You'd argue with a cloud right now," Rosa said, not moving.
"You snapped at a sixteen-year-old hostess for breathing near you. You're feral." Rosa crossed her arms. "Talk or I'm telling Marcus you're having a breakdown."
"I'm fine."
"You're a terrible liar and I love you. Try again."
"There's nothing to—"
"Maya." Rosa stepped closer and lowered her voice. "You've been my best friend for three years. I've seen you hungover, heartbroken, and evicted. This is different. You're scaring me."
Maya stacked plates harder than necessary. "I found out I was sold for forty thousand dollars, Rosa. There's a ledger. I'm a line item. And now there are two other line items out there and Eleanor's going to go find them, and everyone's acting like this is a mission, and I—" She stopped. "I don't know which one of me is supposed to do any of this."
"What does that mean?"
"It means I don't know if I'm Maya or Lily." The words came out flat. "Maya got raised by a nurse and a mechanic in Colorado Springs. Lily got sold in a parking garage. Which one is the real one?"
Rosa was quiet for a moment. Then: "The one standing here stacking plates like she wants to murder them."
"That's not an answer."
It's the only one I've got, babe.
"Also," she added, "Maya's the one with the better best friend."
The shift was a disaster. Maya forgot a table's appetizers, then overcompensated by hovering. She spilled red wine down the sleeve of a man's suit — a good suit, the kind that costs more than her car — and when he raised his voice, she heard herself say, "It's a suit, not a tragedy," in a tone that made the whole dining room go quiet.
"Sir, I am so sorry," Rosa said, materializing with napkins and a smile that could defuse bombs. "We'll take care of the cleaning, and dessert is on us tonight."
In the kitchen, Marcus pulled Maya aside, kind and firm. "Go home, Maya."
"I'm fine—"
"You're not. And it's okay not to be." He squeezed her shoulder. "Go home. We'll cover. Come back when you're you again."
She didn't go home. She got in her car and drove south, out of Denver, past Castle Rock, past the Air Force Academy, all the way to Colorado Springs, to the cemetery on the east side where the grass was still brown from winter.
Rebecca Carter's headstone was simple. Beloved mother, it said. Maya stood in front of it with her hands in her jacket pockets and felt seventeen kinds of furious.
"Hi, Mom," she said. "We need to talk."
The grass crunched under her boots, stiff with morning frost.
A skin of ice glazed the puddles in the path, cracking faintly under her weight as she walked on.
The wind moved through the bare trees. Nothing answered.