The drawer is full of files labeled at the top, mostly in Reese’s neat print, but some are in another handwriting. It looks male, but not Jay’s, and I wonder who she’s been working with. I’ve never seen anyone else around the house. Or, at least, not anywhere near the office. The labels are all names. I look at the front of the drawers and they show what letters are in each one.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” I say dryly, and begin sifting through the As. “Reese told Elizabeth she’d check her files for Quinn. I guess these are the files.” A-r, A-t, A-u, A-v, A-w. “Nope. No Avery at all,” I say, checking through several files on either side of where it should have been, just in case it wasn’t alphabetized exactly right. I pause, my fingertips keeping my place among the files. “So I guess the possibility exists that he doesn’t have anything to do with this.” It’s a wish more than a logical conclusion, but I’m not above wishing.

“Or that he gave you a fake name,” Benson says, looking weirdly broody leaning against Reese’s desk.

I ignore him—not to mention the butterflies in my stomach—and take a shuddering breath as I close the A–F drawer and move on to my real task. My file.

M–T.

Michaels.

The third one down.

The drawer seems to glow like a neon light, and I’m simultaneously desperate and terrified to open it.

Benson draws near and raps a knuckle softly against the label when I continue to stall. “It’s what you came in here for,” he murmurs. A soft hand touches my shoulder, and I try to draw strength from him like an emotional osmosis.

After a long moment I nod and reach for the handle, carefully pressing the latch that lets it slide free, revealing dozens upon dozens of cream-colored files. I feel my world melting around me when I see it.

Tavia Michaels.

I knew it would be there—it’s the reason we broke into Reese’s office in the first place. For answers! But confirmation is a bitch.

I pull it out and stare at it in horror and fascination.

It’s pretty nondescript. A cream-colored folder with a small graphic on the upper right-hand corner of a feather floating above a flame. I peek back into the files; the others have the image too. But I don’t know what it means and don’t have the time to theorize.

I need to look at my file.

It’s pretty thick—I don’t know whether to be encouraged or discouraged by that. I flip the top and look down at a picture of myself as a sophomore.

And, um, it’s not a great picture. Sophomore year was kinda awkward.

“Awww, look at you,” Benson says with a grin, his arm resting around my back. “You’re so cuuuuute.”

“Shut up, jerk,” I say, but he’s managed to break the tension. I lean very slightly into his arm and flip to the next page.

A birth certificate. My Social Security card. High school transcripts. A copy of my parents’ will. Exactly the kind of stuff you’d expect to find in a filing cabinet in the office of someone who had received surprise custody of an injured teenager.

But past all that—pictures of my art. And not just any pictures. I recognize these photos—I took them.

“How did she get these?” I ask aloud, holding up several.

“Hey, did you paint that?” Benson asks, pointing to an oil on canvas of my mother sitting by a window, slicing strawberries.

“Yeah,” I manage to choke out. It’s one of my best pieces. Somehow I managed to capture the … essence of who my mother really is. Was.

I can’t think about my mother right now. I swallow down the grief—push it away—then flip the photo, blocking her face from my eyes.

But there’s still another photo of a painting. And another, and another.

“You’re really good,” Benson says, taking one from me to get a closer look.

It’s strange to realize that he’s never seen my work. Art was my life for so many years. And now Benson is such a big part of my life. And art isn’t.

It feels wrong.

“I took these pictures and sent them to the art school that wanted me,” I explain, as much to distract myself as anything. “How did Reese get them?”

“Um, Huntington?” Benson asks in a wary voice.

“Yeah, how …” But my words fade away as I look down at the first piece of paper beneath the stack of photos.

It’s the letter I first got from Huntington.

No. A draft of the letter.

With notes in the margins in Reese’s handwriting.

“What the hell?” I grasp at the corner of the letter and lift it up only to find a finished copy beneath it. And the pamphlet they sent with it.

And copies of the photos in the pamphlet.

“But … but I didn’t send my stuff to New Hampshire—it went to upstate New York.”

“How hard is it to have mail forwarded?”

“But there was a website. And a phone number. I called them!” I’m almost shrieking. Huntington was the reason we got on the plane in the first place. If it’s fake …

“Here,” Benson says, pulling his cell out of his pocket. “What was the website?” He brings up the Internet on his phone and I recite the web address in a near monotone.

“Here we go,” Benson says once it loads. “Huntington Academy of the Arts. The website is still up and there’s a phone number.”

We both look at the screen for a long, silent spell.