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I straightened. “What about the address 2644?”

The guy repeated the numbers. “I know of a 2644 Old Brook Road. Could that be it?”

Sam and I locked eyes across the table. “You know the place?” he said.

“Do I?” the guy echoed, like that was the stupidest question he’d ever heard. “Everyone knows that place. It’s only the site of the town’s biggest unsolved murders. There was even a crime documentary filmed there a few years back. Where have you guys been?”

Sam wheeled to face him. “Tell me about it.”

The guy shrugged. “Well, the O’Brien family lived out there for a long time. They had two daughters. Then the O’Briens fell on some hard times. The oldest daughter went off to school on scholarship. She was the family’s star. Was supposed to become a doctor or something. At least that’s what Mrs. O’Brien told everyone.

“Anyway, it turned out the daughter ran off somewhere and never came back. About a year later, Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien were found dead in their home, and the youngest daughter disappeared. Never did turn up.”

The empty file in the third drawer in my father’s filing cabinet had had the name O’Brien written across the top.

A rushing noise filled my ears. Sam said, “What were the daughters’ names?”

The guy shook the hair out of his eyes as he looked over at Sam, having no idea his answer would change my entire life. “The girls were Dani and Anna. Dani and Anna O’Brien.”

30

I FELT NUMB ALL OVER AS I TRUDGED down the sidewalk. Sam kept his distance behind me. I hadn’t said a word since we’d left the waffle house, because I couldn’t. The boys had been right. My entire life was a lie. The Branch had planted me. How or why, I didn’t know, but they had. They’d wiped my memories and filled the void with made-up truths. And I’d believed every one of them.

According to that boy in the diner, my parents were dead. Dani was my sister, and no one had seen her in years. And if that was true, then Sam and I must have known each other before all of this, long before the memory wipes and the farmhouse. There’d always been something about Sam, some unseen thread that connected me to him. This explained a lot. If it was true. If I chose to believe it.

The boy in the diner had given us directions to Old Brook Road, and we headed that way on foot, despite the fact that it was a good five miles south of town. Raindrops wet my face. In the far distance, lightning lit the sky.

“Anna?” Sam caught up, his arms tight against him to hold in the body heat because he’d given me his coat. I could make out the butt of his gun bulging beneath his shirt at the small of his back. “We need to talk about this.”

“What are we supposed to talk about? That my dad lied to me? That my real parents are dead? That I apparently had a sister who you were in love with?”

“You can’t go running to that address if you’re not thinking straight.”

He was right, of course, and that only annoyed me more. “I’m thinking just fine, thank you.”

Suddenly he was in front of me. “We need to talk about you and me. About this entire thing. About the answers you might find at that place, and whether or not you’re even ready for them.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I stepped around him. “This is my life. I’d like to know a thing or two about how I got here and why I’m
here
to begin with.” There had to be a reasonable explanation for all this, right?

But even as the thought crossed my mind, the rational side of me argued that we were far past reasonable.

A small truck chugged past and I shoved my hands into the pockets
of my jeans, turning my face away in case the person behind the wheel had any connection to the Branch. Paranoia had taken hold of me and wouldn’t let go. Every corner of my life had been altered by the Branch.

Nothing seemed real anymore.

The truck kept going and my shoulders sank with relief.

When all of this had started, I thought I was a bystander, swept up in the boys’ problems, and that I only had to survive. But if what that guy at the diner said was true, I’d always been a part of it.

How did I fit into it now? What purpose did I serve? Somehow, all of this—the stolen evidence, the house at 2644, me, Sam, the others—was connected. And nothing would be solved until we knew what Sam had buried five years ago, at the house that used to be mine.

My feet ached. My legs felt like rubber. The rain had let up, but thunder still rumbled in the distance. I shivered inside Sam’s coat. He hadn’t complained yet, but his lips were blue and he looked paler than he should.

Two hours after leaving the diner, we turned right onto Old Brook Road. Gnarled branches of mammoth oak trees laced together overhead. I could smell the earthy scent of farmland—overturned dirt, hay, manure. It should have been revolting, but it stirred something deep in my memory.

The first mailbox we passed had the number 2232 nailed to its wooden post. A broken-down truck sat in the driveway, its back fender rusted out.

Rain started falling again, fat drops making a pattering sound on my already soaked jacket. Sam ran a hand over his head, flinging water from his hair. My shoes squeaked and gushed with each step I took.

We passed a working farm with a rambling Victorian out front and a cluster of barns out back. Cows mooed in the field. A dog barked at us from the front porch.

We passed another house. And another.

And then we were there: 2644 Old Brook Road.

The abandoned house was a squat one-story place. Once white, the siding was now a dusty gray. A few of the front windows were broken out, shards of glass still clinging to the frames. An old remnant of the driveway remained, partially hidden by the overgrown lawn. Cedar trees hugged the property on the left, blocking out the view of the neighbor down the road. Woods took up the other side of the lot, the ground coated in dead pine needles.

The rain fell harder now, plastering my hair to my face. Water dripped from Sam’s nose.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked.

I took in the sight of the house. “We don’t have much of a choice, do we?” I cut through the grass and darted up the steps to the front porch. The neglected wood creaked beneath me. Under cover of the
roof, I took a second to wipe the rain from my face as Sam pushed through the warped front door. He let me take the lead.

We entered into a foyer, its hardwood floors pitted and dusty. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling corners. A torn couch sat in the family room, to the right. I crossed to the back of the house, to the kitchen, where the cupboard doors hung from the cabinet frames like broken wings. An old-fashioned stove butted up against a window that looked out on the cedars. I tried to picture the family that had inhabited this space. Dad at the table, reading a newspaper. Mom at the stove. Two daughters chasing each other through the house.

It was almost as if the memories hung there among the cobwebs, waiting for someone to pick them free. And if I could, could I make them mine again?

We backtracked and followed the hallway to the very end, to a bedroom. A four-poster bed sat in the middle of the room without its mattress. Cobwebs made their own canopy on the frame. I looked in the closet, finding the hanging bar empty, a pile of forgotten things in the back corner. I crouched, dug through the belongings.

A hairbrush. A shoestring. A torn newspaper. A tiny decorative box.

I pulled the box out, flipped the saffron lid open. Inside lay an origami paper crane, a knotted beaded necklace, and a picture, the edges crisp and torn, the photo itself folded into a crescent.

In my hands it felt brittle with age, and when I straightened it out, a corner fell away, fluttering to the floor. I sat back on my butt, in
line with the light coming through the window, so I could better see the image.

A breath danced in the hollow of my throat. The girl in the picture was me.

A ten-year-old version of me. My hair was tied back in a high ponytail, but a few loose strands hung in front, hiding my hazel eyes. Dani stood behind me. She must have been fifteen or sixteen, and where my hair was fair, hers hovered between dark brown and auburn. We didn’t look alike, not in the way you would expect sisters to. But we shared the same smattering of freckles, the same narrow nose.

I held the picture tightly in my hands, feeling something stir. A memory, a wish, an emotion, I couldn’t tell. But what I did know was that it was a connection. “She was really beautiful.”

Sam dripped rain on the floor and said nothing. He leaned against the wall between the door and the closet, his shoulder the only thing holding him up. His eyes were closed tightly, as if the very sight of Dani had brought on a new wave of memories and the emotion attached to them. His mouth twitched and the fine lines at the corners of his eyes deepened.

I wrapped my arms around his neck.

“Do you remember her yet?” I said, my voice muffled against his chest.

“I can remember the way she made me feel.”

“Tell me.”

He shook his head, as if the new emotions were alien to him, and he wasn’t sure how to put the feeling into words. “Happy. Safe.”

I wanted to ask,
How do I make you feel?
But it was selfishness and jealousy that fueled the question, and no amount of bravery would pry the words from my mouth. I was too afraid to find out the truth—that I couldn’t make him feel the things Dani had made him feel. And what did it matter now, anyway? Dani was my
sister
. Sam had
loved my sister
.

A flash of lightning filled the dark corners of the room, and a crack of thunder followed.

“We should keep looking,” Sam said, his voice leaden in the quiet between thunderclaps.

I looked once more at the picture still clutched in my hand. I could sense the ghosts of the house around me, welcoming me home.

Sam started for the door. I folded the picture and put it in my jeans pocket, hoping the rain wouldn’t ruin the only image I had of a life I couldn’t remember.

31

SAM AND I SPLIT UP TO CHECK THE rest of the house. I looked in the kitchen cabinets and the pantry. It was hard to guess where we might find a clue, and I wasn’t about to overlook something, no matter how inconspicuous it might have seemed.

Back in the foyer, I checked a coat closet and found it empty. I was making my way through the living room when I heard a crash from the bathroom.

“Sam?” I hurried down the hall and found him lying on the floor on his back. “What happened?”

He blinked several times, like he couldn’t see straight, and then rolled over and rose to his knees. “Shit,” he muttered as he got to his feet. A bolt of lightning illuminated his face for a split second. He looked ashen and wary.

“Was it a flashback?”

He rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and index finger. “I’m fine.” He ushered me back into the hall.

“You’re sure?”

He finally looked at me. “Yes. I’m just tired.”

We had been up all night, and though I’d slept in the car on the way to Port Cadia, he probably hadn’t.

We made our way back to the foyer. “So now what?” I said. “There’s nothing here I would consider suspicious. We’re missing something.”

“The clue said that once I found the location, the tattoo would mark the spot. I thought it was the address, but maybe it means the tattoo is a depiction of the spot.”

“The birch trees seem to be a running theme.”

We headed outside. The rain had stopped since we’d been in the house, but the dark clouds hadn’t cleared up. The boards of the back porch creaked worse than the ones in the front, so I took as few steps as I could.

When I reached solid ground, I looked up and gaped.

Birch trees. Everywhere. At least a hundred of them.

“How are we going to find anything that matches your tattoo in this?” I said.

Sam stepped up beside me. “There has to be something else.”

I went over everything in my head. The scars. The note Sam left himself. The clues I’d found in the tattoo. When I came up with
nothing, I went further back. The UV light. The cipher. The picture…

“Do you still have the picture of you and Dani?”

Without questioning my line of thought, Sam dug the picture out of his pocket and handed it to me. In it, Sam and Dani stood in front of four birch trees. Sam’s tattoo was of four birch trees. That seemed like more than a coincidence. I held the picture up to the woods in front of us. The trees here were too thick, and while I tried to account for years of growth, nothing seemed to match. I examined every other tiny detail and felt a pang of excitement when I noticed the cows in the background.

“Here, look. We passed a farm on the way here. The woods in this picture—maybe they’re back that way.” I gestured to the left. “It would make sense that you wouldn’t hide whatever you stole in the one place the Branch would look. It’d be close, but not that close.”

“It’s worth a shot,” he said, and we started through the woods.