From Brooke Beyfuss comes a tender, deeply emotional novel exploring trauma and healing, love and family, and the impossible lengths we’ll go to protect the ones we love, even at the expense of ourselves.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and the first three chapters from Before You Found Me by Brooke Beyfuss, which is out August 1st 2023!
How far would you go to save a child who isn’t even yours?
Before You Found Me explores the unlikely bond that develops between two abuse survivors and takes a deep dive into personal sacrifice, morality, and the healing powers of family―both blood and found――from the author of After We Were Stolen.
Rowan McNamara doesn’t open the door to her new life―she’s thrown through it. Following an explosive argument with her abusive fiancé, Rowan runs. With no family except for her estranged sister, Celia, Rowan takes refuge in an idyllic New England town.
There, she meets Gabriel, the eleven-year-old son of her neighbor, Lee. Lee is welcoming, friendly, and a little too helpful. But Gabriel is a mystery: withdrawn, often bruised, and only willing to speak to Rowan through his basement window. When she discovers that Lee has kept Gabriel imprisoned for the past three years, Rowan is desperate to save him. Fueled by outrage and empathy, she abducts Gabriel and flees to her childhood home in rural Oklahoma, determined to raise him as her own.
Together they battle nightmares, curious stares, and Celia’s constant disapproval. But when Lee begins haunting more than their dreams, Rowan and Gabriel realize they stopped pretending to be a family a long time ago. Their bond is just as strong as blood, and they’re willing to do anything to protect one another.
Chapter One
When she finally left, she left with nothing.
She could have gone home. Packed a bag and grabbed the very few things that meant anything at all, but she didn’t. There wasn’t a single thing in that house worth facing all the blood on the floor. Her neighbor—the same one who’d called the police—had delivered her car to the hospital a few days earlier. As soon as she had her discharge papers in hand, Rowan made one phone call and followed Route 13 up the coast, leaving Virginia behind in a blue-and-white blur.
She was exhausted, but she wasn’t worried about nodding off. Her entire body was a slug writhing in salt, a freshly skinned knee bathed in alcohol. Thirty staples forged a metal path from her left hip to her right shoulder blade, along with God only knew how many stitches. The pain wasn’t foreign…just different. Over the past two years, she’d been on the receiving end of countless slaps, frequent backhands, and many, many closed fists. But shattered glass had a finer touch; it paid personal attention to every inch of her body. The glass had coated her, clung to her, impregnated her until she was so sharp, no one could touch her without bleeding.
It took the surgical team hours to free every shard from her skin. She swam up from a leaden fog to a parade of doctors and nurses, all of them dying to tell her how lucky she was. That it could have been so much worse.
It was an interesting statement, and it always came without elaboration. So Rowan asked everyone who said it how much worse it needed to be before she was allowed to get upset. What was the invisible threshold she needed to reach before it became acceptable to grieve the body she’d lost? No one had an answer, so they sent in specialists with expensive watches and eager hands, full of ideas about reconstructive surgery and laser treatments and skin grafts. She hadn’t listened because it didn’t matter. Even if they could erase every blemish and every scar, she would never be the same again.
Driving kept her focused, quieted her mind, but after she’d spent five hours on the road, the sun set, and her energy went with it. Rowan flexed her hands against the steering wheel and tried not to veer over the yellow lines as she approached Wilmington, Delaware. She braked at a red light, wincing against the pull of the seat belt.
Her fingers floated toward her left eye, probing for pain and tenderness in small, curious strokes. It was sightless and still closed, her eyelid puffed tight against the line of black stitches that crossed her temple like marching ants. The patchwork of bruises coloring the rest of her face was yellowing around the edges, but a few knotty bumps remained stubbornly purple.
When the car filled with green light, Rowan could barely lift her foot from the brake. Sore or not, she was tired—far too tired to pull the all-nighter she’d been counting on. With more than three hundred miles in front of her, she turned onto a local road and parked under a tree that cast enough shadows to hide her face.
Bedford Memorial Hospital had released her with a plastic bag of bloody clothes and two accessories: one old and one new. The new one, a thick white hospital bracelet, still circled her wrist. The old one gleamed from the third finger of her left hand. The diamond sparkled in the dim light, throwing rainbows across the ceiling as though it had nothing at all to do with what had happened.
Rowan slid the band over her knuckle and rolled down the window. She tilted her face toward the sudden rush of cool dampness, but the late-spring breeze did nothing to soothe her skin or quiet her mind. She closed her fingers over the ring, forcing the stone into the center of her hand. In the next breath, before she could decide not to, she tossed it out the window in a glistening arc and threw the car into gear. She drove with her foot to the floor for perhaps ten seconds before a passing streetlight lit her broken face. Her hand felt empty on the wheel, too light, as though she’d severed some vital part of herself. She reversed and flew fifty feet backward without a single thought or glance; the brakes screamed and so did her back as she tumbled out of the car and began combing through the grass and gravel.
The smashed remains of drunken littering turned the road glittery, and Rowan’s scrabbling hands closed on every bit of shine that caught her eye. Passing headlights threw her bloody fingers into sharp detail, effectively arresting her search. She took a deep breath and braced her forehead against the bumper of the car.
Ethan walked toward her, all lit up in rolling waves of blue and red. His steps were easy, a saunter that belied the fury in his eyes. Shattered glass covered Rowan like confetti, forming glistening rainbows that trembled and danced with every breath. The sirens were getting closer and so were the lights; they skimmed across the side of the house, and the trees, and the blood that painted her shape in the wood. Ethan leaned over her, and he said…
“Do you need some help?”
Rowan spun around, her right eye wide and terrified—a sharp contrast to her left, which barely resembled an eye at all, puffy and weeping pink tears. A small man in jogging clothes stood ten feet away. Rowan dimly realized he was offering the space so he wouldn’t scare her. She had scared him instead. She knew what she looked like.
“No, no, I—well, maybe. Maybe I do.” The words cracked with leftover tears, and she lifted a hand absently to her hair, the only thing about her that wasn’t a mess; it fell down her back in a bright curtain that shimmered in the breeze. Her smile felt broken.
The man took a few steps toward her. “Are you having car trouble? My wife is home. I can call her if you need a ride somewhere.”
“No, it’s just—my ring. I dropped my engagement ring, and I can’t find it.”
Another car passed, lighting the surprise that flashed across his face. “Oh. Well, I can offer you an extra set of eyes if it’ll help,” he said. “They’re a little older than yours, but they work.”
She offered a weak note of thanks as he dropped to the ground and began edging along the asphalt. Rowan joined him, praying her ring wasn’t barreling down the road as a fifteen-thousand-dollar adornment in someone else’s tire.
“This probably isn’t polite,” the man said as he crawled all over the blacktop, caring not a whit about the health of his bare knees, “but aren’t you a little bit young to be engaged?”
It was a terrible question, but not as bad as the one he could have asked. Rowan shrugged. “I can vote. I can drink. Isn’t it a little bit late for a jog?”
He smiled. “I worked second shift for years. It turned me into a night owl.” His head disappeared behind the rear tire. “You don’t happen to have a light, do you?”
Rowan tossed him the tiny flashlight she kept on her key chain, and he aimed the beam under the car. “I think your troubles are over, my dear.” He flattened himself against the ground and wiggled under the bumper, grit and pebbles dimpling his skin. A moment later he dropped the ring, grimy now, into her waiting hand.
“Thank you so much,” Rowan said, finally embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I know I look…” She shook her head. “Thank you.”
“Glad I could help.” He got to his feet, glancing at his watch as she rubbed the ring with the hem of her shirt. “You’re right. It is pretty late. Does your fiancé know where you are?”
Rowan finished giving the ring a hasty polish. After a moment’s hesitation, she slid the band onto her right ring finger—the one with no connection to her heart. She regarded her unexpected savior with an expression that was no longer pleasant and no longer grateful.
“I hope not.”
***
Rowan surrendered the night at a motel with a deeply slanted roof and a row of red exterior doors. Trucks clogged the parking lot, but the lobby was deserted. When she got to her room, she dropped her bag onto the floor and forced down her dinner: french fries chased with a chocolate milkshake melted into soup.
The air conditioner whirred to life as she stared at herself in the blank face of the television. The woman at the front desk had refused to meet her eye, but as Rowan turned to leave, a voice at her back had whispered that lavender oil was good for scars. Sage advice, something a mother might say, though Rowan had never known that privilege. She only knew Celia.
The thought of her sister—who hadn’t even bothered to visit, let alone offer organic remedies—shattered the remains of an old promise. She cursed her racing heart as she picked up her phone, and a moment later, a sleepy voice was in her ear.
“Hello?”
Rowan gritted her teeth. “Hey, Ceil, it’s me. Were you sleeping?”
“No,” Celia said, clearing her throat. “I’m awake. I’ve been waiting for you to call.”
“Phone works both ways.”
Celia ignored that. “Where are you?”
“Delaware. I’ll be at Laine’s tomorrow. Did you kick the squatters out of my house yet?”
“No, I did not. They have two months left on the lease. I’m not going to throw them out because you’re too proud to sleep in my spare room.”
Rowan gripped the phone tighter. “I told you I’m not staying with you. Why should I?” Her voice faltered and broke. “Six days in the hospital is a long time when no one comes to see you.”
The change in Celia’s own voice was subtle and tense. “You were a thousand miles away. I couldn’t possibly be gone that long. I have a lot of people who depend on me, you know that.”
Rowan let out a bark of laughter. “Right. Silly me for thinking I’d get some priority, huh? By the way, did the doctor tell you how many blood transfusions I needed? I think it was two, maybe three. I don’t remember. I was so out of it. And I have one of those rare blood types, but you know that, right? ’Cause you have the same one? See, right there, you could’ve helped me out, but it’s okay—your patients are far more important than your sister.” Celia started to speak, but Rowan wouldn’t let her. “I will be at Laine’s for the next two months, just a phone call away. When my house is ready, please be kind enough to let me know.”
She hung up and tossed the phone onto the bed. It ricocheted off the mattress and landed facedown on the floor next to her hospital bag, which was spilling its contents across the threadbare carpet. As Rowan sifted through packets of ointment and rolls of gauze, the phone came to life again, a harsh buzz that felt like a punishment even before she saw the screen. When she did, she sat frozen, clutching the phone as it screamed his name again and again, the air between her hovering finger and the glowing glass the only space between them. Every vibration echoed in her heart, quiet and trembling, in a room that was all at once too big and too bright. Eventually, the phone went still, leaving a silent corpse in her hand.
Ethan
Missed Call
Rowan placed the phone on the floor again, gingerly this time. It wasn’t the first time he had called—she’d picked up the first time, fresh out of surgery and too groggy to understand that bail hadn’t been enough to hold him.
She got up to check the lock on the door, and then she fumbled through the bag again, poking and searching until her fingers found the amber bottle, currently her most prized possession.
The pill melted against her tongue, sharp and bitter with the promise of release. She tried to breathe as she rested against the pillow, expecting a greater yield considering how heavy her head felt. But there was no peace behind her eyes. Every image was red and dripping—jagged memories from a place that was always dark.
***
The curtains were edged in pale yellow light when Rowan was wrenched from sleep by the thundering fist of the cleaning woman. After cracking the door open to defend her checkout time, Rowan stood under a warm shower. The soap scraped against her staples, and the knotted ends of plastic thread poked her fingers. Rowan tried not to prophesize on the scars that would follow. She brushed her hair until it was barely damp and then looped a skein of it around her fist, finding no comfort in the pale marriage of red and gold. She loved her hair. It had been her favorite thing about herself until the first time Ethan had used it as a leash, snapping her head back and laughing. She twisted the bright length on top of her head in defiance.
Her head ached from the weight by the time she drove across the Massachusetts state line, sucking down the icy dregs of her third Coke. Two hours later, she rolled into the westward town of Ellisburg where Laine Mae, her best friend, had offered Rowan the use of her house, currently unoccupied while Laine spent the summer visiting her grandparents in Seoul.
It was more than generous—Rowan hadn’t seen Laine in years. The two of them had met shortly after Rowan was placed in her final foster home, a hurried and messy transaction following her second failed stint with Celia. Her new family was parented by a pair of retired teachers who housed a tangle of kids in their rambling New Hampshire farmhouse. Laine lived down the road. They were both thirteen, with birthdays a week apart, but aside from that, they had nothing in common. Rowan was on her ninth foster placement and well past jaded; she wore defiance like a badge, while Laine barely spoke above a whisper. But their differences balanced, and they fit together without friction. Where Laine was gentle and calming, Rowan was fierce and protective, and it wasn’t long before they became home to each other. They stayed joined at the hip until Celia stepped in once again to rip Rowan from the happiest life she’d known in a long time, herding her onto an airplane to Virginia for her next fresh start. Rowan hadn’t seen Laine since. Celia was always too busy to orchestrate a visit, and then Ethan showed up, scissors flashing, ready to sever every relationship Rowan had.
But despite Celia’s indifference and Ethan’s best efforts, they never fully lost touch. And when Rowan had needed help, Laine was the first person—the only person—who gave it to her.
“You’re doing me a huge favor,” Laine said when Rowan called her from the hospital. She sounded great; her voice buzzed with an energy Rowan couldn’t fake. “The neighborhood’s pretty quiet, but I’ll feel better having someone there.”
“Are you sure? Celia said I could stay with her, but—”
“It’s yours,” Laine had replied.
Rowan navigated half a dozen tree-lined streets before reaching a tight-packed row of houses separated by thin strips of grass. Her temporary haven sat at the far end of the road, quaint and unimposing behind a slightly weathered picket fence. While Laine’s house needed a little work, Rowan could see huge potential. The beautiful arched windows were surrounded by grimy patches where the shutters should be—the result, Rowan knew, of a recent renovation snafu. The missing shutters gave the house a crooked appearance, like a face with no eyebrows.
She walked to the side yard, where a terra-cotta flowerpot was perched in the grass next to a low basement window. Rowan reached inside, digging through dead stems and wilted petals until her fingers found the key—a flash of bright metal twinkling like a promise in the dirt.
Chapter Two
Gabriel was reading when the shadow crossed his lap.
It was nothing, really—just a blip on his radar—but he glanced up as the shape blotted out the dusky light. A well-worn copy of Robinson Crusoe was balanced on his knees. In the moment before the pages had gone dark, he’d been thinking that he would gladly battle cannibals if it meant he could go outside.
But his own island was dangerous enough. It was damp and moldy, with a cold floor and gray cement walls. He had one window, almost too high for him to reach, and every spring and summer, ants and spiders and mosquitoes crawled through the holes in the wire mesh. Winter was better because there were no bugs, but it was also worse because winter was cold.
Gabriel really didn’t mind the bugs that much—at least the ones that didn’t bite. There were plenty of worse things to hate. Like eating. He didn’t get to eat every day, but he still hated it because the food he got was always cold, and sometimes it was so dry and stale that every bite hurt his mouth. His showers were cold, too, but that was okay. The laundry soap he washed with burned his skin.
Most of all, he hated the kids across the street. They played outside every day just because they could, flying over the sidewalk and chasing the ice cream man. They screamed with voices that were clearer than his and never faded. Gabriel used to scream, too, but he stopped as soon as he learned it only made things worse. It took him a long time to learn—long enough for his voice to match the way he looked: thin and gritty and weak.
But this interruption, the alien shadow, was something new. He dragged his chair to the window and stood on it, pressing his nose against the screen. The shadow fidgeted and paced until his eyes adjusted to the light and showed him a girl. Not the girl who usually lived there; she’d been gone for days. This was someone different. She bent suddenly, and Gabriel jerked away from the window, curling his fingers against the rusty edge of the metal frame.
She didn’t notice. Her eyes were fixed on a flowerpot, her fingers rooting inside and spilling dirt down the orange clay. Gabriel studied her carefully. Her hair was bright coppery gold, and she had a ton of it, all looped on her head like a bow on a present. When she stood in the sun, her entire head looked like it was on fire. It was warm outside, but she had on big, baggy clothes and dark glasses that covered half her face. The skin he could see was blotchy and red, like she was getting a sunburn or had just finished crying.
Once the girl dug up whatever she’d been looking for, she unlocked the side door and disappeared into the house. Gabriel watched her go, a small bubble of excitement taking root in the pit of his stomach.
Then the door to his own house slammed above his head, and heavy footfalls pounded the ceiling. He moved away from the window, walked to the corner of the basement, and curled into a ball, as far from the stairs as he could. His hands shook. They always did when the door slammed.
His father was home.
Chapter Three
Rowan lay in bed with the sheets pulled up to her ears, cowering in the quiet comfort of Laine’s guest room. The moon was full, shining cool light through a window Rowan couldn’t shutter. Her phone was next to her. During the day, it stayed dark, but her nights were filled with the constant buzzing reminder that Ethan was not about to let her go that easily.
On the first night, she’d blocked his number, but her resolve hadn’t lasted long. It was like standing with her back to a loaded gun. The fact he was calling her at all meant he didn’t have the means to do much else. It was also evidence. She sent screenshots of the missed calls to her lawyer every day. If the phone kept Ethan busy, she was content to let him dig himself deeper.
But that didn’t make it any easier to hear. Rowan had no tethers to her old life, no sentries to call for updates, save for the attorney who assured her that no, Ethan couldn’t leave the state, so he was right where she’d left him. It didn’t matter. Ethan liked getting inside her head as much as he liked tossing her across the room, and it would take a lot more than eight hundred miles to stop him.
***
Rowan tried to open her eyes one morning, but they felt like they were full of sand. She’d been at Laine’s for two weeks, and she still didn’t feel safe enough to sleep behind those wide-open windows. The makeshift curtains she fashioned out of bedsheets were of little comfort and always landed on the floor before morning. As usual, she’d barely managed to grab a few hours before the sun woke her. In the kitchen, she drank cup after cup of coffee and searched neighborhood sites for local painters, anyone who might be able to close the eyes on this house. Once the caffeine kicked in, she couldn’t sit still, so she wandered into the garage, where the weathered shutters lived, flakes of red paint dotting the floor.
Rowan knew the story. A few months earlier, Laine had hired a guy off a grocery store bulletin board to strip and paint her shutters following a particularly nasty winter. After a signed contract and a hefty deposit, he appeared one morning, yanked the shutters off the house, and piled them in the driveway. Two days later, Laine’s check was cashed, his phone was shut off, and the shutters were nearly hijacked by a group of overzealous curbside scavengers. Before Laine had a chance to threaten legal action, her grandparents had surprised her with a plane ticket, leaving the house in its present state—blank white and startled.
Rowan was pretty startled herself. Far from enjoying a peaceful respite, she’d fallen into a pattern of behavior that was disturbing even by her standards. In the hospital, when she wasn’t drugged, she’d been remarkably lucid—when the police took her statement, she threw Ethan so far under the bus, it felt like she was driving over him. But since arriving at Laine’s, important details had begun slipping away, despite the evidence carved in her skin. The selective amnesia was so sudden that Rowan began carrying around a copy of the police report, anticipating those desperate, panicked moments when she needed to know if it had happened at night or during the day, the name of the arresting officer, the color of her shirt. Twice, she grabbed her phone to answer one of Ethan’s many calls, and her only thought was that she hadn’t talked to him in a while. She was so blinded by her mind’s attempt to shut off, so completely distracted, that she didn’t notice when her stitches finally dissolved and her left eye no longer puckered and drooped. After her staples were removed, she barely registered the long puffy scar where the glass had split her in two.
It sounded like healing, but it wasn’t. It was a trick, and she was playing it on herself. She stared straight through the scars she’d wear for the rest of her life while her mind tucked away every bad memory, as though hiding them were enough to make them disappear. It was exactly how she’d stayed with him for so long. She had to notice. She had to remember. She had to do anything she could to keep her anger from fading to that once-upon-a-time when Ethan had been the only one there for her. She needed to harness that energy before it consumed her—cash it in before it drove her even further away from what little peace she had.
Rowan danced her fingers along the wood, chips of paint clinging to her skin. The shutters were long, each with a half-moon carved on top to fit the arched windows. They were also old, original to the house, and awkward as hell. They folded of their own free will, something she discovered when she nearly severed her fingers on the first pair she tried to lift.
She ignored the sharp pain shooting from her left hip to her right shoulder as she dragged the shutters toward the side of the house. She was barely through the garage door when a voice cracked the air like a whip, so sudden and so loud that Rowan jumped. The shutters slipped and landed right on top of her foot.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!”
She looked up and saw an absolute giant of a man hurtling toward her. “Is this your first day on the job, or are you just desperate for a hernia?” he asked, grabbing the edges of the wood.
“What?”
“You’re lifting with your back. Bad form.” Before Rowan could say a word, he pulled the shutters out of her hand and hoisted them up, balancing the wood on top of his head. “Where do you want them?”
“Um…over there,” Rowan said, pointing to the stretch of siding next to the kitchen door. The man propped the wood against the house and headed back toward the garage.
“Did you buy this place?” he asked, grabbing the second pair.
“No, I—”
“Renting?”
“Just for a few months. You really don’t have to—”
“It’s no trouble. My name’s Lee,” he said, setting them down in the grass and offering his hand; it swallowed hers, his grip tight enough to hurt. “Lee Emerson.” He jerked his thumb toward the house next door. “I live here.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“What’s your name?”
For a moment her reply was caught behind her tongue, snagged on something she couldn’t see. “Rowan.”
“Rowan.” His eyes were very blue—charming but not sweet. They raked her from head to toe. “Sorry for busting in on you, but you didn’t know what the hell you were doing.”
Rowan laughed, one quick, nervous bark. “And you do?”
“Damn straight. Check out the van,” he said, pointing to his driveway. “Emerson’s Masonry. I haul rocks all day long; these are toothpicks to me.”
He leaned the second pair of shutters against the house. Flecks of red twirled like snowflakes in the breeze. “Are you going to strip them?” he asked.
“I’m going to paint them.”
“If you don’t strip them first, you’re wasting your time. Come inside for a minute,” he said, starting toward his house. “I’ve got some solvent, I think—”
“I’ll buy my own.”
“It’s right in the garage—”
“I met you three minutes ago,” she said. “I’m not going in your house.” She smiled tightly, her fists clenched at her side.
Lee laughed. “Cautious to a fault, huh?”
“No. Just smart.”
“Smart-ass, you mean,” he said, disappearing into his garage. A minute later he returned with a rusty can and a flat-edged scraper. “Here you go,” he said, handing them over. “Don’t say I never gave you anything.”
“Thanks.”
“And don’t go hiring anyone to get those shutters back on the house if that’s your plan, neighbor,” he called, climbing into the white van in his driveway. “I can probably spare a few guys for you.” He stuck his head out the window as he backed out. “If you’re as smart as you say, you’ll take me up on that.”
Rowan watched him as he drove away, the can and scraper still clutched in her hands.
The solvent had a noxious odor and was as thick as condensed milk. It took her forever to pry off the lid, and she was rewarded with a chemical burn when the solution exploded from the can. She forced her pinched and blistered hands into a pair of gardening gloves and began covering the wood with wide, sweeping strokes.
While she waited for the chemicals to dissolve something other than her skin, Rowan turned her attention back to Lee’s house, surreptitiously judging the state of his shutters. Structurally, the house was similar to Laine’s, but it had been polished to a shine. The perimeter was framed by a short brick wall and impeccable landscaping. The lush shrubbery and tumbling flowers made the tiny house look like a little kid playing dress-up.
When the paint began to blister, Rowan pushed the scraper across the slats, sending a crimson blizzard swirling in the breeze. She worked steadily, if not competently, to lay bare the weathered boards, gouging tiny nicks into the wood with every pass.
It wasn’t long before her arms were burning from the effort, but that wasn’t what made her stop. There was something stirring in the space around her, some kind of weight in the air, as palpable as a shout. For a minute she thought Lee had come back, but his van was still gone. She looked down the driveway, as though someone had called her name, but the street was still and silent.
Rowan’s heartbeat picked up as she pressed the scraper against a stubborn patch of red paint. She half expected her phone to buzz in her pocket, but it too was quiet. She turned suddenly, and her eyes caught a dancing shadow darkening Lee’s basement window, something small and quick that vanished the moment she saw it. She returned to the shutters and glanced over her shoulder again. The shadow retreated. Her voyeur was matching her movements, ducking out of sight whenever she looked up. They were good at it, too; they hadn’t made a sound. Rowan pulled off her gloves. “I can see you, you know,” she said. “It’s not nice to spy on people.” The shadow scurried away.
Rowan shook her head and turned back to the battered wood.
“I wasn’t spying.”
It was a quiet voice for such a loud shadow, low and husky. The speaker was young—there were no more than ten years there—but something about the tone sent a chill up Rowan’s back.
“I was just looking out the window.”
He sounded like a little boy, but his voice was all wrong. It lacked…childishness. She’d never heard someone so young sound so spent, so completely drained. He sounded as tired as she felt.
Rowan bent down to peer at the screen. It was speckled with red paint, but there was nothing but darkness beyond. “Sorry,” she said. “I guess that means I was spying on you.”
He didn’t respond.
She tried again. “What’s your name?”
Long pause. “Is my dad gone?”
“Who, Lee?” she asked. “Yeah, he’s gone. Why?”
“I’m not supposed to…I’m grounded.”
“Oh, I gotcha,” Rowan said. “Don’t worry, I spent half my life grounded, I won’t tell. What’s your name?”
“You promise?”
“What?”
“You promise you won’t tell my dad you saw me?”
“Cross my heart.”
Two small hands pushed the screen up, and the boy suddenly appeared—at least the top of his head did. “Gabriel,” he said quietly.
“I’m Rowan.”
“I know,” he said, pacing from one end of the window to the other. “I heard you talking.”
“How old are you?”
“Eleven. How old are you?”
Rowan smiled. “Yesterday was my birthday. I turned twenty-two.”
“That’s old.”
“Yeah, it’s really not.” She heard metal being dragged across concrete, the stamp of two small feet, and then the boy rose into view slowly and shyly, squinting against the light.
His face bore no resemblance to the gravel in his voice. He was beautiful. The sweetness she’d sought in Lee’s blue eyes was bright and shining in Gabriel’s. His skin was very pale—almost sickly, she thought—and smudged with dirt beneath his wavy mop of dark hair. Something about his face was familiar to Rowan for no reason she could pinpoint. Gabriel blinked up at her.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
“Want to come out and help me? I bet your dad won’t mind if I put you to work.”
He hesitated. “I can’t.”
“There’s twenty bucks in it for you if you do.”
“No,” he said quietly, staring at the grass. “I’m grounded.”
“Well, that’s a standing offer,” Rowan said, picking up her brush. “This is going to take me days. What are you doing down there?”
Gabriel stretched his hand through the window and grabbed a fistful of grass, twisting the blades into ropes. “Be careful,” he said. “That stuff burns.”
“I know. It took half my skin off. Why are you in the basement?”
He shrugged. “I like to read down here. Or draw.” He pointed suddenly, his finger jabbing the air. “It’s dripping.”
“You read and draw?” Rowan repeated, adjusting her stance. “Shouldn’t you be glued to YouTube and addicted to video games?”
“Why?” he asked, without a trace of sarcasm. He sounded confused, as though he’d never heard of such things.
Rowan nodded. “An Amish existence. I get it.”
Gabriel frowned up at her. “What’s Amish?”
“Off the grid. You know, horses, buggies, lots of straight pins and puppy mills.” She was smiling when Lee’s van pulled into the driveway. “Uh-oh. Red alert.”
“What?”
“Your dad’s back.”
She barely got the words out. When she turned to the window, she got a final, fleeting look at Gabriel before he vanished, as though he’d been snatched into darkness by a hand she couldn’t see.
