Mia Solis

Mia Solis exists exactly where systems shove girls they no longer want to remember: under somebody else's name, inside a job that pays cash and asks no family questions. We find her at the back entrance of a riverside motel in Savannah carrying sheets to the service van at 5:42 a.m. She stops dead when she sees Tessa step from the SUV.

"No," Mia says immediately. Not denial. fear. "No, no, you were dead."

Tessa moves slowly, palms visible. "I was inconvenient."

Mia almost laughs, then nearly bolts. Nico gets his badge out fast enough to stop pure flight. I say Nina's name because that is the only currency that matters. Mia goes white and sets the sheets down like they suddenly weigh too much to carry.

She is twenty-three now, sharp-faced, tattooed, and held together by the kind of watchfulness children should never perfect. When we get her into the motel office and close the blinds, the first thing she asks is not whether she is in trouble. It's whether Poppy remembers the bird wallpaper.

"You knew Poppy?" I ask.

"I babysat once while Tessa met Nina in the office. She liked the wallpaper. I hated it." Mia rubs her wrist absentmindedly. "Vivian said birds made girls feel observed by heaven."

The sentence turns my skin inside out. Mia sees it and gives me a tired half-smile. "Yeah. That face. Keep it. It'll help."

Nico asks about the crash night. Mia shuts down for a beat. Tessa says quietly, "You don't owe the whole thing at once. Just start where you can still breathe." That, finally, does it. Mia inhales and says, "I was the third passenger because Nina thought if I left town alive the donor assault couldn't disappear with paper."

Then she looks straight at me and adds, "Your husband was already on the dock when the car hit the water."