When she turned to leave, the copper-haired man touched her elbow. "You gave it what it needed," he said. "Not every story can be returned, but every story can be held."
"June," Addyson said without thinking.
Addyson expected a question next—where she’d learned to climb, or why she’d kept a ledger of doors. Instead, they asked for a favor: a small one that seemed insignificant until she saw the map the woman with the spectacles unrolled. It showed a neighborhood stitched from photographs, but one square was blank, an absence in the center like a missing house. "There is a place," the woman said, "where names get lost. We cannot go in, but we can send." privatesociety addyson