She knew everything about herself. She remembered every moment of her life.

  The name given to her at birth did not warm her soul the way the name Angela did. To become an angel after being called “devil’s spawn” or “child of sin” was like a bright light after impenetrable darkness.

  She knew nothing else. She was not familiar with the concept of love. She had been taught to love God, taught to love her neighbor. She had been taught to obey the will of those who created her, but she had not experienced that feeling herself for a single day.

  She did not know what a home was.

  Now, lying on the soft mattress in the room under the stairs, she remembered the days when she had lived in that little room, though it had differed little from the damp and foul smelling basement.

  “You do not deserve any other life.”

  “Be grateful you have a life at all. That is your reward.”

  “You are bearing punishment for those who gave birth to you. You are their punishment.”

  Those were his words. He instilled fear of God in her, telling her what trials awaited if she did not obey.

  Angela hugged Toby tighter.

  That woman, Molly, was nothing like her mother. Molly was kind. With her, it was cozy and warm. And Molly did not speak of God’s punishment. She did not call her “spawn.” She gently called her Angela.

  “I will always be Angela. I do not want another name.”

  There was a quiet knock at the door, and Molly entered.

  “My girl, I made soup. Are you hungry?”

  Angela studied Molly’s kind face carefully. Why is she so pleasant? Why did I not have a mother like her?

  Angela nodded. She was hungry. The food in this house was very tasty.

  Food.

  The new house had been her punishment. She was not allowed to leave it because then her mother and father would be killed. And it would be her fault. The fear had settled so deeply in little Angela’s head that she accepted her fate of living in the dark basement. The food brought to her once every two days was not enough. Angela felt unbearable hunger, yet she could not get out of the basement. The hatch was tightly locked, and the small girl did not have the strength to open it. There had been jars of pickles and jam stored in the basement. She ate them until the supplies ran out. Sometimes her mother brought her baked goods in a bag, and Angela hid them to stretch them for several days. But such gifts were rare. In time, Angela began to think about survival.

  The idea came to ten year old Angela when she began picking at a hole in front of the mattress.

  “Toby, it’s empty there,” she said to her toy and began crawling along the wall, checking whether it could be dug everywhere. It turned out the walls were just ordinary earth. The basement had been dug out, but the walls had not been reinforced. Her vision had long since adapted to complete darkness. Angela saw perfectly well in the dark, so it was not difficult for her to estimate where her tunnel would go unnoticed. The old furniture would make excellent cover. “We will make a door, Toby. I do not want to die. Do you? Yes, I know, you do not either. Then let’s work. We have nothing else to do anyway.”

  It took Angela months to reach fresh air. When her mother, father, or brother came, she sat on the mattress, dirty, hugging the bear. And deep in the basement, behind a reliable barricade, work awaited her. They brought her food, books, sometimes changed her clothes, but they did not let her out, saying that from now on she could not go home. She had to wait longer.

  Angela marked each passing day with a pencil on the cover of her primer. Shane and Orla had not examined the books, so they had not seen those numbers. Angela knew perfectly well in which month she had been put into the basement. She could count thirty and thirty one days in alternation, except for February and July with August. She had learned the calendar at school. The calculations were approximate, but it made it easier to understand how much time had passed. As soon as thirty days were counted, she made a notch on the wall under the stairs.

  In the first years, Angela missed school the most. She had been a very capable girl. She loved reading and writing, understood mathematics well, and was interested in geography. A curious, attentive girl who did not stop loving life even when it had practically been taken from her.

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  Angela did not give up.

  Digging was hard. She had a small metal scoop that she had found among the garden tools in a box. None of her family had ever thought to inspect the basement and remove the things that could help the girl survive. Fortunately.

  At first she dug only forward and grew angry because there seemed to be no end to the work. Then, after thinking it over, she realized that since the hatch to the basement was in the ceiling, she needed to dig upward. And she began. Sand fell into her eyes, her mouth, her ears. Angela endured it. After digging for a while, she returned to the basement to get rid of the pile of earth. She used that earth to cover her excrement in the compartment where potatoes had once been stored. It helped suppress the stench.

  When a crack appeared and the girl saw the sky, it was the happiest day. Angela danced with Toby all over the basement, not thinking about exhaustion or the fact that she was growing weaker. She had not received food from her parents for three or four days at a time. She had to drink rusty water from the tap and eat the remains of pickles that made her nauseous.

  She dug the opening in the middle of the day, but she climbed out only at night, knowing for certain that no one would come then. Lately, they rarely came to her at all.

  At first Angela emerged to the surface in fear. She hid in the grass and plucked dill growing nearby. The garden was neglected, but a great deal of food grew there. Angela climbed out at the end of summer, when the tomatoes were ripe. Oh, she gathered a whole handful into a cap she had stumbled upon while digging in a garden bed. Someone had forgotten it there. That meant it was unwanted.

  Returning to the basement, Angela arranged a feast of dill, tomatoes, and carrots. She seated Toby at an improvised table under the stairs and eagerly devoured the stolen food.

  With time, the girl grew bolder. She carried into the basement everything she could find at night. Like a shadow, she slipped into the house while everyone slept, grabbed whatever she saw, and ran.

  At twelve, she began running to the lake to swim.

  She easily distinguished day from night, and now it became much easier to calculate the days. When she saw only darkness, she counted days by her parents’ visits. Sometimes she asked her mother what day it was and what time.

  “It’s noon, sweetheart. It’s noon. Thursday.”

  “And the month?”

  “May.”

  When her mother left, Angela corrected her calculations. With the tunnel, she no longer had to ask what day, month, or year it was. She stopped asking anything at all. She stopped answering as well. She spoke to Toby in her thoughts, knowing he could hear and understand her anyway. She read silently and never aloud.

  At twelve, Angela fell silent for many years.

  “Here is your soup,” Molly placed a bowl of fragrant soup in front of the girl. “Shall I make you some toast?”

  Angela smiled gratefully. Then she nodded eagerly. Delicious food. Very delicious.

  She patiently waited for the toast and then began to eat. Molly also sat down, placing a plate of soup before herself. It was clear from the woman’s face that she wanted to ask something, and Angela froze, setting down her spoon, waiting for the question.

  “Angela,” Molly said softly, “if we knew your real name, we would have found your family long ago. Did you have a mother and father?”

  Blinking in fear, Angela neither nodded nor shook her head. She did not want to answer that terrible question.

  Concern reflected in Molly’s eyes. Without police permission, she was trying to obtain information. If she made a mistake, Angela would stop trusting her. So Molly decided to change the subject.

  “It’s warm today. I want to work on the seedlings. Will you help me?”

  A bright smile returned to Angela’s face. She nodded and resumed eating her soup. Molly, however, was restless. Before her sat a girl who completely and unconditionally trusted her and considered this house her own. Yet Molly could not question Angela about what had happened, how she had ended up in that basement, and most importantly, why she had not run away.

  Who were Angela’s parents?

  Where had the girl lived before she came here?

  Questions, questions, questions.

  After lunch, they went into the garden to plant zucchini and peppers, and to sow parsley, cilantro, and leaf celery. Molly watched Angela. The girl diligently did everything exactly as Molly instructed. And she navigated the garden well.

  “She walks through the garden bent low,” she told O’Halloran the next day when he stopped by for a cup of coffee. Angela was still asleep. “Sometimes she even crawls. It must be a habit, because the moment the neighbors stepped into their yard or garden, she immediately hid. And so skillfully that even I could not keep track of her. She would be right here, and suddenly she was gone.”

  “So she used to hide from people’s eyes before.”

  “There is no doubt about that, Inspector.”

  “Did you try asking her about her family?”

  At that moment, Molly felt relieved. She had thought she was breaking the law by questioning the victim herself, but Shane dispelled her doubts.

  “To be honest, I tried, but I did not insist. The words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ frightened her. Perhaps Doctor Leary can explain it. She would know better. But if you are interested in my opinion…”

  “Of course. You are an educator. No worse than Leary. I am listening.”

  “My conclusions may not coincide with others. I believe Angela’s family is involved in her imprisonment.”

  Daughter.

  Shane replayed old Brannigan’s words again and again in his mind. Tim was a son. But there could have been a daughter as well. He could not exclude that possibility. The O’Flaherty family might well have had two children, a son and a daughter.

  Angela was not asleep. Having slightly opened the door, she stuck out her nose and listened carefully to the conversation between the inspector and Molly.

  Molly’s question immediately resurfaced in the girl’s memory. Did you have a mother and father?

  “My family. And HIM. He did this. I saw.”