Everything was different. Different faces, different names, different house, different friends. Sometimes Rachel questioned if it had been such a good decision to come back here, before remembering three very young faces that needed her just a bit more than she needed to be selfish. Their family might have been pieced together, but seeing Amissa with Gabriel, how Michael was with her—really, everything about Benjamin, told her if they'd done one thing, it was raise them well. Even lovingly, one might say, which just about struck her dumb. Rachel knew she had to be here, but it still felt like she was some kind of intruder, and it was not a feeling she cared for. It was a feeling she was reminded of every time she made to pass by the master wing, as she was doing just now. The double-doors at the end of the hallway at once beckoned to her and repelled her. Since leaving St. Mungo's, Rachel had been in the room once, to collect her clothes. But the idea of staying there, in a place of such intimacy, physical and otherwise, was unpalatable? Macabre. Nerve-wracking. Certainly nothing that would appease Rachel.

But she found herself walking toward them, regardless. As far as she knew, it had been empty since… before, and the urge to look at this setting of an unremembered life was irrepressible. A glance at the grandfather clock told her she had time before anyone else was due home. Unable to deny the tug toward the room any longer, she slipped through the ominous double doors.

( She started with the wardrobe, tapping on the back, digging through pockets, )