Sisters Vanished in Idaho — 6 years Later ONE of Them Walked Into A Police Station With A Dark Story

Six Years to the Door

Some disappearances don’t look like disappearances at first.

Sometimes they look like a good Saturday—coffee before sunrise, a car packed with snacks, two sisters laughing as the highway opens into Idaho’s wide, volcanic silence. And sometimes the thing that ends a life isn’t a cliff or a storm or a misstep on bad terrain, but a decision made in the presence of someone who looks harmless enough to trust.

Angela Wallace lived because a lock failed at the wrong moment for the wrong man.

Jenny Wallace didn’t.

What follows is the story that unfolded between those two facts—the six years between a text message sent at 9:47 a.m. and a woman walking barefoot into a Boise police station with mud on her skin and a name that felt like it belonged to someone else.

🗺️ 1) June 9, 2001 — “It’s Like We’re on Mars”

The alarm went off at 5:30 a.m., and for once neither sister hit snooze.

Angela Wallace lay awake in the gray pre-dawn light, listening to the familiar sounds of Jenny in the kitchen: cabinet doors, the gurgle of the coffee maker, the quiet clink of a spoon against a mug. Jenny always moved with purpose, like she had a mental checklist running behind her eyes.

They were close in age—Angela was twenty-four, Jenny twenty-six—but it often felt like Jenny had been born older. Not stern, not controlling. Just steady. The kind of person who made space feel safer simply by being in it.

They still lived together in a small two-bedroom apartment in Boise. Friends teased them about it, sometimes gently, sometimes not. But after their father died two years earlier, the choice had stopped feeling like an eccentricity and started feeling like a structure holding up the world.

“Forecast says seventy-two and clear,” Jenny called from the kitchen.

Angela rolled onto her back and smiled at the ceiling. “Perfect.”

Craters of the Moon National Monument had been on their list for months. Angela, an art teacher with a stubborn love for black-and-white photography, wanted lava textures and brutal horizons for a series she’d started: stark compositions that made the familiar world look strange. Jenny, a graphic designer with a job that demanded constant “fresh ideas,” wanted three hours without deadlines and a sky that didn’t vibrate with city noise.

They packed with the practiced efficiency of women who had hiked Idaho trails their whole lives: water bottles, trail mix, granola bars, sandwiches wrapped in foil, sunscreen, a small first aid kit their mother insisted they carry, two cameras—Angela’s Nikon and Jenny’s compact digital.

By seven, Jenny’s Honda Civic was loaded, and the sisters were rolling out of the apartment complex as the sun crested the eastern hills.

They talked the way sisters do when they’ve lived in each other’s pockets long enough to speak in half sentences—Angela’s students, Jenny’s rebranding project for a regional bank, their mother Lisa’s renewed habit of calling more often than necessary, as if conversation could keep grief from settling.

When they reached the monument visitor center, the landscape shifted into something alien: black lava flows stretching to the horizon, twisted formations, hardy shrubs that looked like they’d learned to survive on stubbornness alone. The air smelled dry and old, like scorched stone that remembered fire.

At Devil’s Orchard, Angela burned through film quickly, crouching to catch the morning light on jagged lava edges, climbing rocks to frame spatter cones like sculptures. Jenny wandered ahead, calling back whenever she found something that demanded attention.

Around 9:30, Jenny paused at the top of a small rise and pulled out her phone. One bar flickered, then vanished.

“It’s like we’re on Mars,” she laughed. “Service is terrible out here.”

She tried to send a text to their mother anyway.

Made it. It’s gorgeous. Love you.

The message took three attempts, but it went through.

Lisa Wallace would later tell investigators she received it at 9:47 a.m. and smiled so wide her cheeks hurt.

It was the last message anyone received from either sister for more than six years.

⛽ 2) The Gas Station in Arco

By early afternoon, their cameras were full and their legs pleasantly tired. They talked about late lunch spots as the monument fell behind them in the rear-view mirror.

About twenty minutes later, a gas station in Arco appeared—small, weathered, the kind of place that existed because travelers needed fuel and there wasn’t another option for miles.

Jenny pulled in to top off the tank. Angela went inside for bottled water and a bag of chips.

When Angela stepped back out, she saw Jenny near the edge of the lot, talking to a woman by an older pickup truck with its hood raised.

The woman looked like someone’s aunt: neat blouse, pressed slacks, sensible shoes, modest gold necklace. Late forties, maybe. Her face held the quiet strain of someone trying not to cry in public.

Angela watched Jenny’s posture shift into that familiar shape—open shoulders, concerned tilt of the head—the body language of a person who couldn’t ignore distress.

Angela approached with two waters in hand.

“Hey,” Jenny said, glancing back at her. “This is Eda. Her truck broke down.”

Eda dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I’m fine. I’ve just been waiting and waiting.”

Her story was simple and plausible. Broken engine. Husband went to find parts. Phone died. She’d been sitting there for hours hoping someone would stop.

“You can use my phone,” Jenny offered automatically, already pulling it out.

No service.

Angela tried hers. Nothing.

Eda’s hope faltered, then she forced a smile that looked practiced. “It’s all right. He’ll be back.”

She started to turn away.

And Jenny, who had been raised on the idea that the world stayed decent only if decent people did decent things, made the decision that changed everything.

“Is there somewhere nearby with a landline?” Jenny asked. “We can drive you.”

Eda hesitated—just enough to feel genuine, as if she disliked imposing. “We live a few miles up the road,” she said slowly. “There’s a landline at the house. But I couldn’t ask you to—”

“It’s not out of our way,” Jenny said. Then she looked at Angela with that soft insistence sisters can manage without words.

Angela felt a flicker of unease, a whisper of instinct she couldn’t name. The isolation. The timing. The way Eda had been waiting at the exact outpost where monument visitors naturally stopped.

But there was nothing overtly wrong. No obvious red flag. And Angela didn’t know how to voice a gut-feeling suspicion without sounding cruel or paranoid.

So she said nothing.

She climbed into the back seat. Eda took the passenger seat. Jenny drove.

The turn came about a mile down the highway: a dirt track barely visible, cutting into the desert. Eda pointed it out, apologetic.

“It’s not far,” she said. “Fifteen minutes.”

The Civic jolted over ruts and stones. Dust rose behind them like a trailing thought. Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. The road didn’t end.

Angela leaned forward between the seats. “How much farther?”

“Just around the next bend,” Eda said.

Jenny’s eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror and met Angela’s. Something passed between them—unease, recognition, the shared sense of this isn’t right—but they kept going, because turning back would mean abandoning a stranded woman miles from help.

Then the property appeared like a mirage: a weathered farmhouse with peeling paint, outbuildings, a barn, a shed, and—surrounding it all—a tall fence topped with wire that caught sunlight like a warning.

A man emerged from the house before Jenny had fully stopped the car.

He was large—over six feet, broad shoulders, thick hands. His face was deeply lined, smile wide and welcoming in a way that didn’t reach his eyes. His eyes were pale and flat, and they tracked the sisters like a measurement.

“Eda,” he called. “There you are. I was starting to worry.”

Eda’s helplessness seemed to evaporate the moment she stepped onto the porch. Her posture straightened. Her voice steadied.

“These young women gave me a ride,” she said.

The man’s smile widened. “Well isn’t that something.”

He extended his hand. “Joseph Clapton. You must be thirsty after that drive. Come inside, get some water.”

Angela opened her mouth to decline.

But Jenny was already nodding, already following Eda toward the door.

And Joseph’s body positioned itself between Angela and the Civic with a casualness that wasn’t casual at all.

“Just for a moment,” he said.

The door closed behind them with a sound that Angela would later describe as a room sealing itself.

🔒 3) The House That Didn’t Feel Lived In

Inside, the farmhouse was immaculate—an unsettling contrast to the weathered exterior. Floors swept clean. Furniture arranged with geometric precision. No family photos. No magnets on the fridge. No casual clutter.

It didn’t feel like a home.

It felt like a set.

Eda walked to the kitchen. “I’ll get the water.”

Angela reached for Jenny’s arm, ready to whisper that they should leave.

Then she heard the click.

A deadbolt sliding home.

Joseph stood against the front door, hand resting on the lock. His welcoming smile vanished, replaced by a cold, assessing expression that made Angela’s skin prickle.

“Jenny,” Angela whispered. “We need to go.”

Jenny had heard it too. Her face went pale. She took a step back.

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” Jenny said carefully. “We really need to get back on the road. Our mother is expecting—”

“There’s no misunderstanding,” Joseph said, calm as a man correcting a child. “You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

Jenny bolted for the back door.

Eda materialized there, blocking the exit. The distressed woman from the gas station was gone. This Eda moved with purpose.

“Sit down,” Eda said.

Jenny tried to push past.

Joseph crossed the room with terrifying speed and grabbed Jenny by the hair, yanking her backward hard enough to send her sprawling.

Angela lunged instinctively.

Something pressed against her side.

A sharp crackle.

White agony tore through her body as a stun device drove her to the floor. Muscles seized. Vision fractured into bright shards. She heard Jenny screaming and Eda issuing commands like someone following a routine.

Then something struck Angela’s head.

Darkness folded over her.

🕳️ 4) Numbers Instead of Names

Angela woke on concrete.

A small room—cinder block walls, no windows, a single bare bulb. Stale air that smelled of earth and something chemical.

Her wrists were bound in front of her with zip ties.

“Angela,” Jenny whispered hoarsely beside her. “Wake up. Please.”

Jenny’s hands were tied too. Her face was bruised already.

Angela swallowed and tasted blood. “Where are we?”

“I don’t know,” Jenny said, voice cracking. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Before Angela could answer, a metal slot scraped open at eye level. Joseph’s face appeared, serene like a man pleased with his work.

“You’re awake,” he said. “Good. That means we can begin.”

“Let us go,” Angela forced out.

Joseph smiled—patient, almost pitying. “Your car is no longer at the gas station. Eda moved it. It will be found at the visitor center where you told people you were hiking.”

Angela’s stomach dropped.

“The search will focus on the monument,” Joseph continued. “Lava tubes. Caves. People disappear out there all the time.”

He spoke in a rhythmic cadence, the tone of a sermon practiced in private.

“You’ve been chosen,” he said. “For reformation.”

Angela saw a laminated sheet on the wall—a list of rules, precise handwriting.

Speak only when spoken to.
Obey all commands immediately.
Gratitude must be expressed for all provisions.
Violation results in punishment.

“Cooperation means survival,” Joseph said, following her gaze. “The choice is yours.”

The slot closed.

Angela and Jenny clung to each other in the dark for the first weeks, whispering escape plans into the concrete, listening for routines, telling themselves help would come.

They didn’t know helicopters were already searching the wrong wilderness.

They didn’t know their car had been staged at the visitor center with Jenny’s dead phone inside.

They didn’t know no one would think to look eighteen miles away behind a fence.

The mornings became ritual.

Metal striking metal to wake them. The bulb snapping on. Joseph’s voice through the door.

“Rise. You have three minutes.”

On the first morning, he handed them gray smocks—rough, shapeless fabric—and ordered them to remove their clothes.

Jenny said no.

Joseph didn’t argue.

Eda threw a bucket of ice-cold water over Jenny and stripped her with brutal efficiency while Joseph pinned Angela against the wall, hand around her throat just tight enough to make breathing difficult.

They learned quickly what “choice” meant in Joseph’s vocabulary.

Afterward, Joseph removed their personal items with the detached care of someone removing evidence: Jenny’s necklace, their wallets, Angela’s photos.

“These belong to your old selves,” he said. “Your old selves are dead. You’re being reborn.”

Then he gave them numbers.

Angela became Seven.

Jenny became Eight.

“There were others before you,” Joseph said, as if reciting a fact from scripture. “Six. You are the seventh and eighth souls I’ve been called to save.”

Angela looked for signs of the others. She found nothing.

No other prisoners.

No graves—at least not where she could see.

Only work.

🪓 5) The Years that Blurred

The labor began before dawn and ended after dark. Joseph called it purification through toil—exhaustion as a method of control.

They dug trenches in hard desert soil without explanation.

They hauled rocks from one end of the property to the other, then back again.

They scrubbed floors on hands and knees with brushes that shredded their palms.

Food was minimal: thin oatmeal, a piece of bread, watery soup. Just enough to keep them alive. Never enough to feel human.

Eda supervised with cold efficiency. Any hesitation became punishment.

Angela’s first serious punishment was confinement in a metal storage container behind the barn—black, airless, hot. Six hours of heat that made her sweat feel like drowning.

Jenny’s first punishment was three days without food.

Angela tried to share her ration. They punished her too.

They learned not to help each other where Eda could see.

Joseph’s manipulation was quieter and worse. In the evenings he spoke like a preacher through the slot in the door, describing the outside world as corrupt, their former lives as sin.

Then he slid newspaper clippings under the door—articles about the search scaling back, about the monument’s dangerous terrain, about officials concluding the sisters were likely dead.

And finally, a notice about a memorial service in Boise.

Jenny wept over that scrap of paper like it was a death certificate.

Angela held her sister and felt something inside her harden—not into strength, but into a cold readiness that frightened her.

Eda occasionally offered small kindnesses: an extra blanket, a few minutes of rest, a cup of cooler water. But the kindness always came with a price—a blanket confiscated for an invented infraction, rest followed by punishment for “presumption.”

Angela learned to dread kindness more than cruelty.

Cruelty was predictable.

Kindness was a hook.

Time stopped being time. Seasons became heat and cold, light and dark.

Angela measured life by the distance between morning commands and evening sermons.

And through it all, she held one thought like a stubborn flame:

As long as Jenny is beside me, this isn’t over.

🌩️ 6) The First Escape and What It Cost

In August—fourteen months after the abduction—a storm tore across the desert like a furious animal. Wind ripped at the fence. Rain hammered the ground above their underground cell. Water seeped through cracks and pooled in the corners.

The next morning, the compound looked damaged: snapped posts, wire twisted and torn, debris scattered.

Joseph assigned the sisters to clearing the mess while he focused on the fence with obsessive attention.

That was when Jenny grabbed Angela’s wrist.

“The lock,” Jenny whispered. “Last night. I heard it. It didn’t catch all the way.”

Angela’s heart lurched. Fear rose immediately—trained, automatic. “We can’t.”

“If we’re caught, we’re already caught,” Jenny said, eyes blazing. “We have to try.”

They waited until the bulb clicked off, until the house went quiet, until their fear became a sharpened point.

Jenny pushed the steel door.

A soft click.

The door swung inward.

Night air rushed in, smelling of rain and sage.

They ran—bare feet on damp earth, wire tearing their smocks as they squeezed through the storm-damaged fence, blood they couldn’t feel through adrenaline.

For a few minutes, the world expanded.

The desert was terrifying, but it was open.

They made it nearly a mile.

Then headlights appeared, bouncing over rough terrain.

The pickup truck roared toward them.

Angela’s legs stopped working. Jenny tried to pull her forward, but the truck cut off their path, its bulk ending hope like a slammed door.

Joseph climbed out.

He didn’t yell.

He didn’t rush.

His face in the headlights was a calm verdict.

Punishment followed with surgical precision.

Joseph dragged Angela to the metal container and sealed her in with a bottle of water—one bottle—and left her for three days. The metal baked in August heat until her mind fractured into hallucinations. She heard Jenny screaming outside. Later she understood: Joseph had made Jenny listen to Angela suffer.

When they finally opened the container, Angela couldn’t stand. Her lips were split and bleeding. Her skin blistered. Her mind felt loose inside her skull.

Jenny cradled Angela’s head and repeated, “I’m sorry,” until words became sound and sound became nothing.

Something broke in both of them that night.

Hope didn’t die entirely.

But it learned fear.

And fear became the new law of their bodies.

🔥 7) Jenny Becomes Dangerous

By the third year, Jenny stopped pretending. Not in dramatic speeches, but in small refusals that upset Joseph’s careful system.

She met his eyes when she was supposed to look down.

She spoke when she was supposed to be silent.

She moved slowly on purpose, forcing Eda to repeat orders, escalating punishments she endured with a stoicism that looked like contempt.

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Angela whispered one night.

“Good,” Jenny said. “Better than this.”

Angela’s throat tightened. “Don’t say that. As long as we’re together—”

“There’s no hope,” Jenny replied flatly. “The only question is whether we die as ourselves or as whatever he wants.”

Angela wanted to argue. The words stuck because some part of her already knew Jenny was right.

Then winter came, and Jenny began watching routines with new intensity. Counting steps. Timing doors. Studying Joseph and Eda the way a person studies weather—looking for shifts that might mean survival.

Angela begged her to stop.

Jenny only said, “I remember what it felt like to run.”

The attempt came in late November, on an evening that began like every other.

The sisters were in the farmhouse kitchen cleaning up after dinner. Eda sat at the table watching, her attention lazy with the confidence of a predator comfortable with prey that has stopped biting.

Angela scrubbed dishes.

Then a crash.

Angela turned to see Eda on the floor, blood streaming from a gash on her forehead, Jenny standing over her with a kitchen knife in hand.

“Run,” Jenny said, voice sharp as glass.

Angela froze—horrified, electrified, knowing in her bones this wasn’t a plan. It was a last match struck in a dark room.

Eda reached toward an alarm button mounted on the wall.

Joseph appeared in the doorway like a nightmare that had learned how to wear a human face.

In one motion, the knife was gone and Jenny’s arm was twisted behind her back, her body slammed against the counter hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs.

Joseph looked at Angela with clinical calm.

“Seven,” he said. “Return to your quarters.”

Angela wanted to refuse.

Her body moved anyway.

Conditioning is a cruel kind of obedience. It lives in the muscles.

She walked out of the kitchen while her sister’s eyes followed her—wide, desperate, furious, pleading.

That was the last time Angela saw Jenny alive.

🕯️ 8) Separation

Instead of returning Angela to their cell, Joseph locked her in a different space—a storage closet in the basement, barely large enough to lie down.

She was fed once daily. Water twice. Allowed out only briefly under watch.

She asked about Jenny until her throat ached.

Eda’s face remained impassive. “That’s not your concern anymore.”

A week later, Joseph spoke through the door with the calm certainty of a man who believed he had God’s signature on his work.

“Eight has been removed from the compound,” he said. “Her reformation was unsuccessful.”

“What does that mean?” Angela choked out. “Where is she?”

“That information is not relevant,” Joseph said. “Eight’s failure does not have to be your failure.”

Angela searched his voice for a crack. Found none.

Not knowing what happened to Jenny became a new kind of prison, built inside Angela’s mind. Her imagination made endless versions: Jenny dead, Jenny sold, Jenny buried, Jenny suffering somewhere else.

Without answers, Angela’s resistance collapsed.

She didn’t become “reformed.”

She became emptied.

She followed orders without question because the part of her that could imagine alternatives had gone quiet.

Joseph mistook emptiness for salvation.

Eda watched Angela sometimes with something that looked—disturbingly—like discomfort. As if even Eda could sense the difference between a human being obeying and a human being no longer there.

By 2006, Joseph began speaking about acquiring another “candidate,” expanding his operation, saving more souls.

Angela listened like someone listening to rain.

🚪 9) October 2007 — The Lock That Failed

Joseph’s mistake came in October 2007, born from overconfidence.

A phone call arrived on a Tuesday morning. Angela was scrubbing the kitchen floor when she heard Joseph’s voice change—softer, deferential.

“Yes,” he said. “Of course. We’ll leave immediately.”

He hung up and turned to Eda.

“My brother,” he said. “Heart attack. Funeral in Salt Lake City. Thursday.”

Eda went pale.

They had never left the property together. Not once. One of them always stayed to watch.

But family obligations cracked their system.

They spent the day preparing. Joseph checked locks, tested security, reviewed contingencies. Eda packed with quick, tight movements.

On Wednesday evening, they locked Angela in the storm shelter as usual—underground, steel door, deadbolt.

They were distracted. Hurried.

Angela heard the lock engage with a softer click, a slight incompleteness she wouldn’t have noticed if her body hadn’t been trained to listen for danger.

She waited in darkness until the truck started and drove away.

Then she waited longer, expecting a test.

The compound stayed silent.

Finally, Angela reached for the door.

The lock mechanism had a hairline crack—damage from a recent repair Joseph had noticed but not fixed.

Angela pushed.

The door swung open.

Cool night air rushed in, smelling of sage and freedom.

Angela stood in the doorway trembling.

For the first time in years, she was alone and unguarded.

She could close the door and wait—safe, predictable, numb.

Or she could step out.

Somewhere in her mind, she heard Jenny’s voice from years ago: For ten minutes, we were free.

Angela stepped outside.

🏙️ 10) The Walk Back to the World

Angela’s shoes—cheap canvas slip-ons that never fit—fell apart within the first mile. Soles separated, leaving her essentially barefoot on gravel and dirt.

Every step hurt. Stones bit into her feet. Thorns tore her skin. Blood dotted the road behind her.

She kept walking.

She had no map, no clear direction. Only the service road leading away from the compound. The desert at night was cold in October, wind cutting through her thin smock.

Every sound became a threat in her head. Every distant engine noise became Joseph’s truck.

Twice she threw herself into the sagebrush and lay flat, waiting for headlights that never appeared.

By dawn she’d covered perhaps eight miles. The sun rose behind her, painting the desert in gold that would have been beautiful in another life.

She found power lines later—civilization’s thin veins stretching across emptiness—and that gave her enough courage to keep moving, though fear still argued with every step.

She passed a trailer with a barking dog and laundry on a line.

She passed a boarded-up gas station.

She passed fields with workers in the distance, voices carrying across open air.

She didn’t approach anyone. Six years of conditioning had taught her that strangers could be traps.

It was late afternoon when she saw Boise’s lights in the distance, scattered across the valley like a fallen constellation.

Something in her chest cracked open—not triumph, but an aching recognition that she had returned to a world that had continued without her.

She entered the outskirts like a ghost: mud on her skin, hair matted, clothes torn, bare feet bruised and bloody. People stared. No one approached.

She found the police station by following signs, then stood across the street for nearly an hour, unable to cross.

Inside were questions. Inside were lights. Inside was reality.

Finally, she moved.

She pushed through the glass doors.

A desk sergeant looked up—kind eyes, tired posture, a man who had seen enough to recognize when something didn’t fit the usual categories.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Angela pressed her muddy hands against the glass partition and tried to speak.

Nothing came.

Then she closed her eyes, reached back through six years of enforced silence, and forced the words into existence.

“My name is Angela Wallace,” she whispered. “I was taken. My sister… she’s dead.”

The sergeant’s expression shifted from routine to alarm.

Within an hour, fingerprints confirmed it.

Angela Wallace—missing since June 2001—was alive.

⚖️ 11) The Reckoning (and What It Couldn’t Fix)

Detective Felix Sammon arrived quickly, the kind of detective whose face carried the quiet knowledge that some cases leave stains you can’t wash out.

Angela sat wrapped in a blanket, shaking as she drank water.

“Can you tell me where you’ve been?” he asked gently.

Angela’s voice was small, but the details were sharp—etched into her by survival.

“The compound,” she said. “Joseph and Eda Clapton. Off Highway 26. Northeast of Arco. Service road. Broken fence post.”

A raid began at dawn.

Law enforcement found the farmhouse, outbuildings, and fence exactly as she described. They found restraints, surveillance equipment, a basement room with cinder block walls and rules laminated to the wall like doctrine.

Three days later, they found Jenny.

Buried in a shallow grave behind the barn, marked by a neat arrangement of stones.

The medical examiner documented what Angela already knew in her bones: prolonged abuse, malnutrition, blunt-force trauma.

Joseph and Eda Clapton were arrested in Salt Lake City during the funeral they’d traveled to attend.

Joseph’s shock was genuine. He had believed isolation made him untouchable.

The trial became a spectacle. Angela testified in a flat, measured voice that made seasoned prosecutors look away. She described rules, punishments, the slow dismantling of identity.

Eda’s defense tried to paint her as another victim. Evidence showed otherwise.

Joseph spoke in court about salvation and corruption, his eyes steady on Angela.

“Seven was my greatest success,” he said. “I gave her purity.”

The jury delivered life without parole for Joseph. Eda received decades in prison.

The verdict didn’t bring Jenny back.

It didn’t return six lost years.

Angela went back to Boise afterward and found a city that had moved on. Her old apartment had new tenants. Her students had grown up. Her mother had aged under the weight of not knowing, then nearly broke under the truth.

Freedom, Angela learned, wasn’t the same as being whole.

She was no longer behind cinder block walls.

But she still woke in her mind to metal striking metal, to a voice counting minutes, to rules that no longer applied.

And somewhere in her memory, a sister still ran ahead on black volcanic rock, laughing at how the world looked like Mars—believing, with her whole heart, that helping a stranger was a small and simple good.

Angela survived.

But survival wasn’t a clean ending.

It was the beginning of learning how to live in a world that had continued without her, carrying grief like a second skeleton, and the echo of Jenny’s last command—Run—like a pulse under the skin.