Birth certificate.

Passport.

Social Security card.

Bank statements.

Everything I had quietly protected.

I stuffed them into my coat.

Then I did something small but deliberate.

I left my bedroom door wide open.

I switched on every light.

I aimed the desk lamp toward the hallway.

The next morning, my mother would walk toward her carefully preserved “shrine” and discover that the tomb was open.

The dead girl was gone.

That night, I drove north.

I didn’t stop at a motel.

I didn’t call anyone.

By the following evening, I reached Philadelphia.

There, behind a gas station, I removed the SIM card from my phone and destroyed it.

If they wanted Anastasia Dunaway dead so badly, I decided they could have their version of her.

I was going to build someone new.

For two weeks, I lived in my car and used public-library computers to search for jobs.

Eventually, I found one in Burlington, Vermont.

Green Mountain Botanicals.

A commercial orchard and landscaping farm run by a woman named Martha Vance.

No relation to Clara, despite the name.

Martha was older, stern, and practical.

She looked at my nursery experience and asked only one question.

“You know how to prune fruit trees?”

“Yes.”

“And can you work hard?”

“Yes.”

She slid a set of keys across the desk.

“There’s a caretaker’s cabin near the north orchard. Rent comes out of your paycheck. Work starts at five.”

That tiny cabin became the safest home I had ever known.

It had one bed.

A wood stove.

A small kitchen.

And a window overlooking acres of apple trees.

For months, I barely spoke.

I worked.

I pruned.

Carried soil.