Chapter 230
The First Witness
The footsteps stopped when Claire touched the window.
On the lake, the cabin door stood open. A woman waited inside, her face hidden by the rain. Claire knew the posture before she knew the face: shoulders held too carefully, hands folded as if apology were a profession.
“Who is she?” Rowan asked.
Claire pressed the envelope against the glass. “Someone who was here before all of us.”
The woman on the lake lifted one hand.
Every lamp in Room Eighty went out except the one above the table. Beneath its circle of light, the blank pages filled with a map of the original shoreline.
There had been no cabin there. Only a collapsed boathouse and a girl who had survived the first night alone.
At the bottom of the map, Claire found a name.
NORA VALE.
Mara’s surname. Her mother’s name.
The woman in the cabin turned toward the shore.