The Woman I've Become

6: Julia

Julia fixates on Casey with an intensity that frightens even her. She wants him, and she decides she will have him, even though she barely knows him. The risk is enormous. Her reputation, her safety, everything she has built stands to be lost, and she knows it. Still, the wanting wins. She makes her choice and commits to it.

To clear the path, she lies to her parents about a student council meeting and forges her mother's signature to skip school. The deception cuts her off from her old life and her obligations. It is a deliberate severing, a step across a line she cannot step back over. She is no longer the girl who follows the rules. She is a girl willing to falsify, to lie, to abandon the structures that have held her.

Then she loses her virginity to Casey. For Julia, this is not a casual act. She believes it is the start of everything she has waited for, the beginning of the life she has been anticipating. The hope she invests in the moment is total. She gives him something she can never reclaim, and she does it believing he is the answer to a question she has carried for a long time.

The scene shifts to the lake house. Julia arrives with Acacia and Olivia, hoping to escape the fallout of a viral article that accuses her of using a serial killer to excuse her actions. The accusation follows her even here, to this remote place, and the house becomes a refuge she desperately needs. She is not simply vacationing. She is retreating, trying to outrun a story that has already been written about her and broadcast to the world.

Once inside, Julia moves through the house checking the windows and doors. She recalls the old shotgun under the bed. The ritual is methodical, born of fear rather than habit. She is preparing to defend herself against a threat she expects to come. The house that should feel like sanctuary feels instead like a position to be fortified. Every lock she tests is a small admission that she believes danger is real and near.

She admits, in the privacy of her own thoughts, that she plans to convince Helen to help her. She steels herself to do what needs to be done when the confrontation comes. There is no illusion of ease in this. She knows she will have to persuade, to push, perhaps to manipulate, and she is readying herself for that moment. The waiting is its own kind of pressure, and she feels it building.

The doorbell rings. Acacia reports that an FBI agent, Rick Howard, is at the door. The unexpected visitor forces Julia to confront a presence she did not plan for. Her preparations were for a different threat, and now a man with a badge stands on her doorstep. The tension tightens immediately. She has to decide, in that instant, how to receive him.

Julia lets Rick in and deflects his questions about the article. She refuses to reveal her true thoughts. Every answer she gives is a small wall, carefully placed. She does not trust him with the truth of what she feels or what she has done. The conversation is a fencing match, and she keeps her blade angled away from anything that matters.

Rick warns her that the lake house is vulnerable. He tells her the Judge could be nearby. The warning lands with weight because it confirms what her own precautions already suggested. He presses her to call him if anything seems wrong. The offer sounds like protection, but Julia hears the implicit message underneath: you are not safe here, and you cannot handle this alone.

She learns that Rick and his wife Meredith have separated. The detail is personal, unexpected, and it changes how she sees him, if only slightly. She agrees to call him, but privately she distrusts him. The agreement is a performance. She will say what is needed to end the conversation while keeping her real judgment hidden. Whatever alliance he is offering, she is not buying it.

Then she invites Rick to stay for pizza and wine. The decision is calculated. She wants to keep him close despite her suspicions. If he is nearby, she can watch him. If he is at her table, she can read him. Hospitality becomes a form of surveillance, and the ordinary ritual of sharing food becomes a strategic move in a game she is playing on multiple fronts.

As the evening settles, Julia reflects on Olivia's happy childhood. The memory is warm and painful at once. She resolves to protect Olivia from the coming danger. The resolve is fierce and personal. Whatever else is uncertain, this is not. The girl's safety is the line Julia will not let be crossed, and the thought of her anchors Julia against the fear pressing in from every side.

Julia admits to herself that she has grown complacent. She blames the accident and Eleanor's death for distracting her from the threat. The confession is harsh and inward. She sees her own failures clearly now, the way grief and recovery pulled her attention away from what was coming. The danger did not pause while she was wounded. It kept moving, and she stopped watching.

She notices that Acacia was charmed by Rick's crime stories. The observation is sharp and immediate. Acacia, listening to the agent talk, was drawn in, and Julia marks her as a possible vulnerability. Someone who can be charmed can be used, or can be led astray. The awareness adds a new worry to the pile she is already carrying.

Later, Julia removes her makeup and collapses into bed. The exhaustion is total, and the pain and fatigue from her injuries press down on her. The physical cost of everything she has been doing shows in her body. She is not a woman operating from strength. She is a woman running on will and whatever reserves she has left.

Then, even in that state, a surge of adrenaline moves through her. She resolves that she must be ready for what is coming. The fatigue does not win. The fear does not win. Something harder in her refuses to lie down, and she holds herself to the readiness she knows the days ahead will demand.

Julia wills herself to stop crying, determined to be strong for Olivia, and the resolve hardens when she finds Olivia's crayon note declaring love for her mommy. She wants to shield her child from a known evil and vows to endure the ordeal for Olivia's sake. Searching the drawer for the glittering object, she uncovers a tarnished gold heart necklace. Its significance floods her with fragmented, chilling memories. She struggles to place the haunting words until the phrase "Friends forever" surfaces from twenty years ago, and the memory pulls her back two decades.

9: Julia

Julia lies to her parents about where she is going, telling them she is staying at Wendy's house when she is really planning to spend the night with Casey. She knows the lie puts their trust at risk, but she wants the night with him more than she wants to protect that trust, and she stays out with him anyway. The deception draws a line between the daughter they believe they know and the person she is becoming.

She also wants to prove she can be bad. She decides to show Wendy her reckless side, treating the night as a chance to demonstrate that she is not the careful, obedient girl everyone takes her for. The performance is meant to impress Wendy, but it also hardens something in Julia, making the recklessness feel like a choice rather than an accident.

At the liquor store, Julia wants Casey's respect, so she makes him open her car door before she gets out. It is a small demand, but it matters to her that he treat her as someone worth the gesture. The ritual steadies her, giving her the feeling of control she needs before she follows him inside.

Inside, Casey buys bourbon and vodka to celebrate their first sleepover. While he is at the counter, Julia notices the clerk hand him a note. The exchange is quick and quiet, but it lodges in her mind as the first sign that the evening is not entirely what Casey has described.

Julia wants to avoid ruining the night, so she suppresses her questions about the suspicious note and says nothing. She tells herself the note is nothing, that asking would only spoil the mood he has worked to create. The silence costs her, though, because it teaches her to swallow what she notices in order to keep him close.

Casey wants a quick dinner, so he takes her to McDonald's. Julia is disappointed by the choice, but Casey dismisses her disappointment and pushes the evening along. The gap between what she imagined and what he offers becomes another thing she decides not to name.

At the restaurant, Julia wants Casey's attention, and she grows jealous as he watches a teenage girl. The jealousy sharpens her, making her aware of how easily his gaze moves away from her. Casey wants to bring the girl into their evening, and he orders Julia to invite her over. Julia wants to keep Casey, so she obeys despite her fear and her sense of betrayal, and she approaches the girl, Dream. Her obedience is a bargain she makes with herself, trading her discomfort for the chance to remain the one he keeps.

Dream wants to join them, and she accepts the invitation. She reveals that she is fifteen and that she wants to be an actress. The disclosure lands strangely, a child's ambition offered to adults who have already begun to treat her as something else.

Casey wants a future hold on Dream, so he gives her his number and claims he has contacts in Los Angeles. The promise is smooth and practiced, and it changes the air at the table, turning an ordinary fast food dinner into the beginning of a transaction Julia can feel but cannot stop.

Later, Julia wants to stop her panic. She searches her room and discovers Wendy's necklace in her bedside table. The discovery turns her fear into something concrete, a physical object that should not be there and that ties the night's unease to a name she cannot escape.

She wants to identify who planted it, and she suspects Acacia, because Acacia unpacked her things and because Acacia has no findable past. The suspicion gives her a direction, though not a comfort, since the person she trusts with her belongings is now the person she cannot verify.

Julia wants to secure the house, so she searches Olivia's room and the bathroom while hiding her fear from her daughter. She moves through the rooms trying to appear ordinary, checking corners and drawers without letting Olivia see how frightened she is. The search changes nothing she can point to, but it keeps her moving instead of waiting.

She wants to rule out an intruder, so she calls Helen and learns that a new grocery delivery man was briefly unsupervised. The detail rearranges her suspicion, giving her a stranger to place inside the house and a timeline that fits the necklace's appearance.

Julia wants to confront the threat, and she concludes that the delivery man planted the necklace and that Wendy is back. The conclusion does not calm her. It tells her that the danger has a face and a plan, and that the night she chose for herself has followed her home.

Julia stands in the hallway and works through the logic of the necklace. She concludes that Acacia is the likely culprit, deciding her old friend is probably the one who set events in motion. The realization reframes everything: the woman she welcomed into the house may be the author of its unraveling.

Julia searches every room on the ground floor for intruders or clues. She finds nothing else unexpected, but the effort exhausts her. The search yields no answers, only fatigue, and the house offers no further evidence to confirm or deny her suspicion.

Acacia appears on the landing and asks if Julia is all right. Julia lies about getting a snack, covering her investigation, while resolving to search Acacia's room. The exchange is brief and outwardly ordinary, but Julia is now performing calm while planning a violation of her guest's privacy.

Julia reflects on her past memories of sneaking into Acacia's room. She realizes the biggest mistake of her life was trusting a beautiful, welcoming package. The memory sharpens her regret into something concrete: the warmth she once found so appealing is now the thing she most distrusts.

Julia wakes after little sleep, looks in the mirror, and vows she is not down yet despite her deteriorated condition. Her reflection shows the toll of the past days, but she refuses to surrender to it. The vow is a small act of defiance against both her body and her circumstances.

Julia joins Olivia and Acacia for breakfast, forces herself to eat, and decides to organize a scavenger hunt to get Olivia outside. The meal is a performance of normalcy, but Julia's purpose is practical: she wants Olivia out of the house and moving, and the hunt gives her a reason to move through the property herself.

Julia calls PI Reed Archer, who reveals the autopsy shows Eleanor suffered a spiral fracture and a bruise before the fatal fall, meaning she was murdered. The news lands as confirmation of what Julia has feared. Eleanor did not simply fall; she was hurt first, and the fall was the end of a violent sequence.

Julia learns from Archer that Acacia's identity does not exist. There are no prints, no records, confirming she uses an alias. The woman in the house is not who she claims to be, and the absence of any traceable past makes her more dangerous than a mere suspect.

Archer reports a neighbor saw a boyfriend carrying a moving box, and Julia authorizes the added expense of forensics on the leftover boxes to trace him. She spends money she may not have because the box is a thread that could lead to the man, and the man could lead to the truth.

Julia ends the call and resolves to keep a close eye on Acacia while continuing to use her access to Eleanor's apartment. She now has two fronts: the guest under her roof and the apartment that may still hold evidence. She commits to both.

Julia, Acacia, and Olivia go to the barn for the scavenger hunt, where Acacia reveals her father was a veterinarian and she grew up in the country. The detail is personal and disarming, and it gives Acacia a plausible ease with animals and rural spaces that Julia cannot help but measure against the alias.

Julia texts this new personal detail to Archer and scans the barn for intruder signs, finding only their own footprints in the dust. The barn is clean of outside intrusion, but the absence of evidence does not settle her. She feeds the investigator a new thread while checking the ground beneath her feet.

Acacia finds a horseshoe for Olivia, and Julia ushers them to the first cottage, which appears undisturbed. The hunt continues as a cover for inspection, and the first cottage offers nothing suspicious.

Julia is hit by a memory of smoking with her old friend in the cottage, then they move to the second cottage, finding nothing suspicious. The past intrudes on the present, a reminder of the friendship that once existed, but the search yields no threat.

Julia walks near the dark woods, considers how easily someone could hide there, and decides to rest before searching further and to visit the supermarket about the delivery guy. The woods are a gap in her control, and she knows it. She sets the supermarket as her next lead and concedes she needs rest first.

Julia nearly collapses on the way back, tells Acacia she needs to lie down, and collapses on her bed hoping not to dream. Her body gives out before her investigation does, and she surrenders to sleep with the hope that whatever comes in dreams stays out of the waking house.

12: Julia

Julia is desperate to tell Wendy about her rendezvous with Casey, but she cannot find her anywhere. Rather than wait, she makes a bargain with a girl she does not even like, promising to attend the girl's birthday bash in exchange for a ride to Starbucks. It is a small, petty trade, but it shows how badly Julia needs to talk to someone about what happened with Casey, and how thin her options are.

The trade turns out to be worthless. Julia waits past six o'clock for Casey, and he never shows. She stands there humiliated and stranded, the promise of the rendezvous collapsing into nothing. The boy who made her feel chosen has simply failed to appear, and she is left exposed, with no ride and no explanation.

Then Wendy arrives in her foster mother Colleen's vintage Mercedes, wanting to rescue Julia. She reveals that Colleen left the keys behind while away in New Haven, which means the car is borrowed without permission. Wendy's loyalty is immediate and physical: she shows up when Casey does not, and she does it in a car she should not be driving.

Julia admits she was supposed to spend the night with Casey. Wendy calls guys jerks, and the casual verdict costs Julia her defensive image of him. Up to this point Julia has been able to frame Casey's absence as a misunderstanding, something explainable. Wendy's blunt dismissal strips that away, forcing Julia to sit with the possibility that Casey is exactly what Wendy says he is.

Wendy proposes music, dancing, and alcohol, and Julia agrees. They decide to go to a club in Norwalk, and Julia secretly hopes Casey will be there. Even after being stood up, she is still orienting herself toward him, treating the night out as a chance to cross paths with the boy who just humiliated her. The plan is Wendy's, but the real pull is Julia's hope.

At Colleen's house, Wendy dresses Julia in a skimpy outfit, and the two admire their reflections before leaving. The scene is light and conspiratorial, a brief pocket of glamour and shared vanity before the night turns. It is also a transformation: Julia is being remade into someone who goes out, who takes risks, who does not sit at home waiting for a boy.

They arrive at the nameless SoNo warehouse club. Julia wants entry without a fake ID, relying on doorman Jeffrey recognizing her as Casey's friend. Her entire access to the night depends on her association with Casey, the same boy who just failed to show. She is using his name to get through a door he did not walk through with her.

Jeffrey lets them in, and Wendy orders Jagerbombs. Then Wendy warns Julia that Casey gives her psycho vibes, and Julia dismisses it. The warning is explicit and specific, and Julia waves it off. She is not ready to hear it, and the drink in her hand makes the dismissal easier.

An older man sends them free drinks, and the two dance provocatively for him while Wendy insists his generosity buys him nothing. Wendy is drawing a line even as she accepts the drinks, asserting that the transaction is one-sided in their favor. The man's attention is a game they think they are winning.

Then Julia blacks out. She wakes the next morning with a drug hangover, discovering she slept through the afternoon and the night. The gap in her memory is total, and the physical aftermath tells her something was done to her.

Julia realizes Acacia has drugged her. The suspicion crystallizes fast, and her first move is to check on Olivia before deciding to confront Acacia. Even in her fury and disorientation, she puts her sister first, verifying Olivia is safe before she goes on the offensive.

What she finds instead is a flood of messages: more than 150 emails containing the old abduction photo, each marked "Liar," each carrying the message "Did you really think you would get away with it?" The campaign is relentless and personal, and it lands on the same morning she wakes up violated. The past she has been trying to outrun is being shoved back at her, over and over, in her own inbox.

Julia confronts Acacia in the study about the necklace found in her room. Acacia denies it and suggests Olivia or the delivery guy planted it. The accusation is deflected cleanly, turned back on a child or a stranger, and Acacia does not waver.

Acacia wants to call Phillip and Julia's doctor, but Julia refuses and fires Acacia, ordering a car for her. Julia seizes control in the only way available to her, removing the person she believes drugged her. But Acacia secretly calls Phillip anyway, and he arrives with Rick, the former FBI agent. The arrival reframes everything: Julia, hungover and furious, is made to look like the unstable one. Her firing of Acacia is recast as an outburst, and the people with authority to judge her are now standing in the room, brought there by the woman she just dismissed.

Julia resolves to question the market delivery guy and plans a trip into town. She is not backing down, and she is not accepting the version of events being built around her. Then Olivia shows her a scavenger-hunt drawing, a small, ordinary moment that lands against the wreckage of the morning. The drawing is a child's game, and it sits in stark contrast to the emails, the drugs, and the adults closing ranks.

Julia refuses Phillip and Rick’s help outright, telling them she wants them to leave so she can handle her plan alone. The refusal strains their trust, and the room’s dynamic shifts as Phillip takes control of the space by sending Olivia and Acacia out so the adults can talk privately. The move costs Julia command of the conversation, and she feels the loss of it.

Phillip hugs her and says he is worried the article is too much for her, but Julia insists she is fine. Rick then reports what he has been doing: he questioned the market manager and the delivery man, Gilbert Neilson, and his findings shift suspicion away from Julia’s theory. Rick suggests Helen had access and that money could be a motive, a suggestion that angers Julia and makes her defend Helen. She argues the timeline makes Helen unlikely and points instead to Acacia as the culprit, confronting Phillip over bringing Acacia into their lives.

Phillip repeats Acacia’s suggestion that Olivia found the necklace, and Julia warns him not to go there. Rick asks how well they actually know Acacia, forcing Julia to deflect and turn the suspicion back on Phillip. Cornered, Julia tells both men she is fine and orders them to return to the city and to his campaign, rejecting their intervention. Phillip protests that Acacia led him to believe something was wrong, but Julia cuts him off and insists she needs to relax alone. Phillip accuses her of behaving like a different person in the house, and she demands to focus on herself.

Alone in her own thoughts, Julia concludes she was drugged rather than losing control, and she decides to keep her guard up. She reassures Phillip and Rick and sends them away, choosing not to send Olivia with her father despite her worry. Once they are gone, Acacia apologizes and claims she was worried, but Julia reads her guilt as a practiced mask. Julia tells Acacia she is not fired but is on probation and must keep Phillip out of it, reasserting control over the household and the situation. Acacia accepts Julia’s terms, and Julia resolves that she has always been alone in this game.

15: Julia

Julia stands at the edge of the woods with Wendy, and everything in her wants to go. The night is ending, the clean escape is right there, but she stays. She lets Wendy walk away alone, and the cost is immediate: the woods seem to close in around her, the darkness pressing closer now that she is by herself.

She wants to slip inside before her parents wake, to get to her room and pretend the night never happened. But headlights sweep the road behind her and stop her cold. She is caught in the open, exposed, with nowhere to hide.

Her first thought is Wendy. She wants Wendy to come back, and she steps out into the car's path, certain it is the Mercedes returning for her. It is not. The approaching car is something else, and the realization lands hard.

Julia wants to run. Every instinct tells her to bolt, but her body refuses and she freezes in the road. Then Casey arrives. He gets out and pins her with anger and fear at once, and she is trapped between the woods behind her and the boy in front of her.

Casey wants her in the car, and he does not bother arguing. He ignores her refusal, takes her backpack, and carries her inside. Julia's protests mean nothing against his certainty, and she is moved like an object rather than a person.

Once she is in the car, Julia wants to confront him for standing her up. She has been waiting, wondering, and now he appears without explanation. But his silence and his stony profile overwhelm her. The accusation she has been building dies in her throat, and the imbalance between them becomes clear: he is calm, she is the one unraveling.

Then Casey turns it around. He wants an explanation for her night, and the demand catches her off guard. Julia refuses to be the one on trial and demands an explanation for his absence instead. The argument turns in circles, each of them refusing to answer first.

Casey wants to end the argument, and he does it by admitting his excuse is weak. Then he kisses her. The admission disarms her more than any defense could, and the kiss closes the distance the fight had opened.

Julia wants Casey. The anger she carried into the car shifts into need, and they have sex in the car. What began as a confrontation becomes something else entirely, her fury redirected into wanting him.

Casey wants control of the encounter, and he takes it by revealing what he knows. He tells her he watched her and Wendy at the club. The confession changes the ground beneath them: he was there, unseen, observing her the whole time. Julia is exposed in a new way, her night laid bare by someone who was watching when she thought she was alone.

Julia wants to provoke him. Instead of shrinking from the revelation, she invites him to join them, turning his surveillance into an invitation. Then she takes charge, moving on top, refusing to be the one who is watched and instead making herself the one in control.

Casey wants Julia to understand his need. He warns her that people like her cannot imagine his life, that the distance between them is something she has no way of seeing. It is a strange kind of confession, half threat and half plea, and it unsettles her even as it draws her closer.

Julia wants to escape with him. She proposes they drive away and never look back, the two of them gone from everything. It is the fantasy she has been circling all night, and she offers it to him plainly.

Casey wants Julia to face reality. He rejects the fantasy, not because he does not want it, but because escape takes money. The practical refusal cuts against everything she has been feeling, and it tells her something about how he sees the world: dreams are not enough, and wanting is not the same as being able to leave.

Julia wants to keep him. She resolves never to let him leave, and they have sex again. The promise is made in the moment, fierce and absolute, and it carries her past the disappointment of his refusal.

The Errand

Julia wants to act on her instincts. She takes Olivia and Acacia out on an errand, dressing it up as a trip for ice cream. The pretense is thin, but it gets them into the car, and that is what matters to her.

Julia wants information from Gil. She finds him and asks her questions, and what she learns is less than she hoped: he delivered the order, but he never saw Rick and does not know him. The trail she was following goes cold at the one person who might have connected her to the man.

Julia wants the truth about the SUV. She keeps digging, and she discovers something Helen never mentioned: a New York vehicle. The detail sits wrong with her, a piece of the puzzle that does not fit the story she has been told.

Julia wants to test Acacia. She drives past her old school, past Starbucks, past the house on Newfield Street, watching for a reaction. Each landmark is a question she does not ask out loud, and she waits to see what Acacia will give away.

Julia wants a confrontation. But Acacia does not take the bait. She only probes Julia's suspicions, turning the questions back on her, and gives nothing away. The test fails to produce the confession Julia wanted, but it produces something else: certainty. Julia ends the drive more convinced than ever that Acacia has betrayed her.

Julia leaves Rick a pointed message, hoping to force a reaction that will reveal whether he is friend or foe. She wants to know why he lied about the delivery guy, and the message is a test she can read the answer to.

She turns the same instinct on Acacia, revealing that someone is watching her and that the necklace was a warning. She wants to see how Acacia reacts to the news that she is being stalked.

Acacia challenges the claim, pointing out that the news coverage of the disappearances never mentioned any necklace. It is a sharp, practical objection, and it puts Julia on the defensive.

Julia reasons through it and concludes that whoever knows about the necklace must be someone involved with her before the abduction twenty years ago. The circle of people who could know is small, and that smallness is its own kind of clue.

Acacia pushes harder, suggesting someone from the original investigation may have leaked the story to the Times to make Julia pay. The idea lands as a provocation, another way of making Julia feel exposed and hunted.

Then Acacia shifts, smoothing over her own antagonism by claiming she believes Julia because she has seen the scars on her back. The concession is intimate and unsettling, a reminder of how much Acacia has already seen.

Acacia asks the question that matters: what secret is the necklace meant to expose, and why is the stalker playing games instead of simply acting? She wants the motive, the thing underneath the theatrics.

Julia answers by naming Wendy Neely as the other girl who disappeared. She wants to see what Acacia does with the name.

Acacia seizes on the contradiction, pointing out that Julia previously claimed not to know Wendy. The trap is obvious, and Julia has to walk into it or around it.

Julia explains. Wendy was her hidden friend, and Wendy gave her the necklace. The admission costs her something, and it reframes the necklace from a threat into a relic of a friendship she kept secret.

Acacia counters with a revelation of her own: Phillip gave her the necklace and paid her to report on Julia. The conspiracy Julia has been building collapses and reforms around a different center.

Acacia presses the point, claiming Phillip wants Julia to appear as if she had a breakdown so he can put her away. The motive is control, and the method is a manufactured collapse.

Julia refuses to accept it on Acacia's word alone. She resolves to withhold judgment until she has more evidence, holding the accusation at arm's length even as it unsettles her.

Rick returns to explain his deception, claiming a confidential informant at the market checked on the delivery guy. It is a reasonable story, and that is exactly what makes it slippery.

Julia presses him on why he needs informants if he no longer works for the FBI. She is testing the seams in his account.

Rick admits he still consults for the bureau and cultivates informants. The admission is partial, a concession that costs him little and explains just enough.

He turns the tables, probing Phillip's possible involvement by asking whether Phillip would do all this to keep his name in the news. The question is calculated, and it points a finger away from himself.

Julia tests him in return, suggesting the Judge scenario was a hoax and watching for any flicker of reaction. She is fishing for the tell that will confirm what she suspects.

Rick deflects, turning the question back on her and asking whether she is hiding something from those seven days. The counter is smooth, and it lands.

Julia sees it: a fleeting, knowing flicker in Rick's eyes. She concludes he knows the truth, and the knowledge settles into certainty.

She thanks Rick, sends him away, and locks the door, certain now that Rick was the inside man. The confrontation ends with the door shut and the answer she was looking for standing on the other side of it.