And there was always blood on her face, tears running through it. Blood pulsed out of a bullet wound in her chest, and she held her left side like it hurt.

I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t know how she’d been injured, or if it’d been me who did it. Sometimes I doubted the reliability of my head. Maybe she was an image left over from my life before the Branch. A girl I saw in a movie. A character I read about in a book.

If she was real, I couldn’t stand to live with the idea that I’d hurt her. The only way I’d have gone that far was if she was trying to kill me first. If the girl was connected to the Branch, then she wasn’t innocent. No one involved with them was ever innocent. Me included.

“In my files,” I started, “did it say anything about a girl from any of my missions? She might have been about our age. Or maybe a bit younger.”

Anna thought for a second. “I don’t think so, but I could check again.” She nudged my chin, forcing me to look at her, but I quickly shifted away.

Anna had always been the type of person who didn’t hesitate when it came to touching. For her, touching was caring. For me though, touching always meant pain. That’s what happens when your dad spends his free time beating the shit out of you. My life was crap even before I joined the Branch.

“Is that what all this is about?” Anna asked. “A girl?” There was a note of worry in her voice. Like she was afraid I’d fall down the rabbit hole of love and get myself shot. Fuck that.

I didn’t answer the question. Instead I did what I do best. I scowled at her. “Just look, please?”

She frowned, but nodded.

“Thanks.” I edged past her to the door to escape. This time she didn’t follow.

2

ELIZABETH

I SCANNED THE SHELVES ABOVE MY DESK and ran a finger down the row of cobalt glass bottles labeled with peeling stickers that said things like THAT DAY THE POWER WENT OUT, SPRING, and CARNIVALS.

My memories were carefully chronicled in fragrant oils, mixed in cobalt bottles, labeled and shelved.

I stopped when I found the bottle—the label—that I’d been searching for.

GABRIEL.

I dreamed of him last night.

Upon waking this morning, I was reminded immediately of just how long it’d been since he’d disappeared from my life, as quickly and suddenly as he’d arrived.

It was hard to forget someone when he’d saved your life, regardless of how much—or how little—you valued it.

Gabriel’s bottle was the oldest. The first. Tied to one defining moment in my life—the night that I was saved, the night that I escaped the people who had kidnapped my mother and me and held us captive for six long months.

I plucked the bottle from the shelf. Though the cork was still firmly lodged in the neck, I immediately recalled the way he smelled.

Musk. Pine. A drop of cinnamon. Bergamot. And finally, cedarwood.

The scar running from my left side all the way down to my hip bone flared, a phantom burning where a knife dragged across my flesh, slicing through tissue and muscle, nicking bone.

The second scar, the old bullet wound in my chest, pulsed.

I missed him. I missed him in a foreign way that I couldn’t explain. I didn’t really know him. I hadn’t even spent much time with him. But every time I thought of him, there was this crushing ache in my head, like Gabriel’s absence was a hole inside me, so deep and wide that nothing else would fill it. By saving my life, he’d taken a part of it with him.

Without opening the bottle, I put it back on the shelf and tucked it behind the one labeled WILDFLOWERS.

I couldn’t revisit Gabriel today. Maybe not tomorrow, either.

His bottle—its contents—was the one I loved and hated and feared and tried desperately to forget.

But it was the one I couldn’t forget even if I tried.

Pots and pans crashed together in the kitchen as I made my way downstairs. I found my foster mother, Aggie, digging in one of the bottom cupboards, her hair tied back with a bandanna. Various ingredients were spread out on the countertop.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

Startled, she whacked her head on the edge of the cabinet door. She scooted back, rubbing the sore spot. “You scared me.”

“Sorry.” I went straight for the coffeepot. Aggie had my favorite mug waiting for me nearby, and I filled it to the top.

“I’m looking for my Bundt cake pan.”

I gestured at the cabinet on the far left. “Check that one.”

She frowned, but looked inside and pulled out the pan in question. “Well, how about that.”

Out of all the foster parents I’d had, Aggie was by far my favorite. I’d been through five homes before settling down here.

Aggie was well into her sixties when she took me in. She was a single woman who had lost her only daughter to breast cancer many years back. Aggie understood loss like none of my other foster families had.

Our suffering wasn’t the same, exactly, but it was suffering nonetheless. She’d been patient with me from the beginning. Kind. Soft-spoken. I wasn’t sure where I’d be without her.

After I’d been rescued, I’d felt like a buoy lost out at sea. My mother had always been my rock—she was strong and determined and smart. In some ways, living without her was worse than being held captive.

A lot of my earlier anxiety attacks could be traced back to my mom’s absence. Some tiny thing would remind me of her—a scented candle, her favorite brand of chocolate, an old sweater—and the pain would come crashing back.