The cabin sat at the end of a narrow, overgrown lane, small and unremarkable, the kind of place no one would look twice at even if they knew exactly what they were searching for. Dawn had just begun to break over the lake behind it, gray light catching on still water, when Lucien turned the brass key in a lock that hadn't been touched in over two decades.

Inside, everything had been left exactly as his mother must have left it—dust thick over simple furniture, a kettle still sitting on the stove, a life paused mid-motion and never resumed. Lucien stood in the doorway for a long moment, overwhelmed by...