Suzanne bowed her head and began praying.
My mother started crying.
“I still can’t bring myself to open this room.”
I stood outside, completely confused.
Why would someone pray over my bedroom door?
And why was my mother behaving as though entering it would be unbearable?
I waited until the visitors left.
Then I went inside.
On the dining table was a photograph of a flowering dogwood.
At its base stood a memorial stone.
In Loving Memory of Anastasia Dunaway.
My name.
My birth year.
And a date from eight years earlier.
Hanging from the tree was a familiar nursery tag.
My handwriting.
She’ll bloom.
I had sold Avery the tree planted in memory of my supposed death.
Suddenly, everything made sense.
The missing photographs.
The locked bedroom.
The funeral obituary.
The weekends spent away.
My family hadn’t told Avery I lived in Atlanta.
They had allowed her to believe I was dead.
For eight years.
I sat at the dining table until nearly midnight.
Then I found my mother’s keys, unlocked my bedroom and packed.
Medication.
Documents.
Clothes.
Ruth’s grafting knife.
My yellow notebook.
I left the bedroom door wide open.
Then I called Ruth.
“I found out why they keep sending me away.”
She listened without interrupting.
When I finished, she asked one question.
“Are you coming here?”
“Not for long.”
“Good,” she said. “It’s time you took that job in Washington.”
Before sunrise, I left Alabama.
I sent my parents one message.
I’m alive. Don’t contact me.
Then I drove west.
Ingred welcomed me at her orchard four days later.
She gave me seasonal work and a place to stay.
For the first time in years, I lived somewhere nobody asked me to disappear.
The work was demanding.
Long days.
Early mornings.
Weather that could destroy weeks of effort overnight.
But I loved it.
I became particularly good at grafting old trees.
Ingred noticed.
Eventually, she offered me a permanent position with health insurance.
I found a therapist.
Made friends.
And slowly stopped feeling guilty whenever I occupied space.
I even started seeing a mechanic named Callum, who worked on the orchard equipment.
He knew almost nothing about my family.
That was surprisingly peaceful.
Four years passed.
My family didn’t find me because they’d spent years searching.
They found me because someone finally noticed a contradiction.
Suzanne decided to establish a horticulture scholarship in my memory.
