She had not told Matt where she was going. She had told him she was going to Target for stocking stuffers, and that was not entirely a lie, because she had gone to Target first, and bought a bag of chocolate coins and a pack of glitter pens and a tiny plastic snow globe with a fox inside it, and then she had kept driving, west, out past the edge of Naperville, into the flat white farmland, and on to Arden Grove, where she had only ever come for holidays with her husband at the wheel.
It was Thursday, Christmas was two days away, and Ivy was at a friend's house making gingerbread. Renée had the afternoon. She had told herself she would just drive by. That she would look at the house and then turn around.
She turned off the engine.
The woman who opened the door was not the woman in the photographs. Renée had known she wouldn't be, of course; the photographs were twenty years old. But some part of her had still been braced for the blond girl with the sparkler, and the person in the doorway was simply a tired woman in her forties, in leggings and an oversized Minnesota Twins sweatshirt, her straight hair, darker blond now and threaded with gray, pulled back in a careless knot. She had no makeup on. Her eyes were swollen. She held a coffee mug in one hand.
She looked at Renée, and Renée watched her recognize her. Watched the blood drain out of her face.
"Oh," Lauren Voss said. "Oh, God."
"I'm Renée Kessler."
"I know who you are." Lauren's hand had tightened on the mug. "I—is Matt—is everything—"
"Matt's fine. He doesn't know I'm here." Renée held up the reindeer bag. "I brought your things back."
Lauren stared at the bag. Then, slowly, she stepped back from the door.
"Do you want to come in?" she said. "I don't—you don't have to. But it's cold. And I just made coffee."