I always new that he was in the Background

Previously

…It was the quiet exhaustion that comes after a long, arduous journey, the moment before a new path reveals itself. She looked at the locket, at the tiny, perfect flowers. Julian Thorne had never left her. He had always been there, a silent guardian, a persistent echo. And now, he was making himself known. The question was no longer if he was there, but why. And what, Eleanor Vance, was she going to do about it? The storm had passed, but a different kind of tempest was brewing within her, a tempest of truth, of memory, and of a connection she could no longer deny. The choice, she realized with a shiver that had nothing to do with the lingering dampness, was hers.