Georgia sat on an iron bench in her small backyard and looked up at the cloudless blue sky. She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the surf across Blue Harbor Lane, breathed in the scents of salt and sand and the lavender plants at her feet. She remembered Great-Grandma Abby once telling her about two rosebushes that used to grow not far from where she was sitting. Georgia opened her eyes, left the bench, and scuffed around the yard. No sign of where the rosebushes had once grown but, she realized, Great-Grandma must have been talking about a time seventy-five years or more in the past.

The rosebushes had been special to Great-Grandma’s mother, Nell. The blooms on the bushes had been a lovely deep pink, Great-Grandma had said, but that wasn’t why the bushes had been special. They’d been special because of what they’d represented.

“What did they represent?” Georgia had wanted to know.

Great-Grandma Abby had stared off into space before she spoke. “My father planted a bush for each of the babies my mother gave birth to that didn’t live, that never even drew a breath of life. One for a little girl named Millicent and one for a little boy named Luther, after my father. First I was born, then my sister Rose was born, and then came Millicent and Luther. My mother never got over them. No mother expects to see her children die before she does. It isn’t the natural order of things.”

Georgia had found that a supremely unsatisfying explanation. She looked again for the spots where two sad rosebushes might once have grown, but found nothing. She knew they had eventually been moved to the garden of the big house in Barnegat Point when Great-Grandma Abby’s father had become wealthy and they had left the little beach cottage behind. The cottage had become a vacation house then, and now it was once again a home. Georgia wished it were a home with two old rosebushes by the iron bench.

“Georgia?” her father called from the back door. “What are you doing out there? Want to go into town with me?”

The idea of walking to Lewisport’s collection of stores and businesses was appealing, but Georgia was enjoying this quiet, lazy morning in the middle of a three-day weekend. As usual, her friends had gone away for the vacation. Ava and the Norwoods were spending Memorial Day with relatives in Portland, and Penny and Talia and their parents had flown to Chicago for a wedding. The Nobles, on the other hand, were having another vacation at home.

No amount of begging by Richard and Henry had been able to change their parents’ minds. (Georgia had not bothered to beg.)

“We can’t afford to go anywhere and that’s that,” Mr. Noble had said the first time the subject arose.

Since her father was still without a job, this had made perfect sense to Georgia. She was just glad he was home again. He had spent several weeks with his sister, Kaycee, and her husband when he’d needed to figure things out. Then he’d returned to Lewisport and announced that he knew what to do with his life after all. He was going to sell real estate. And he did. He’d sold a fishing shack on an inlet not far from Blue Harbor Lane. He’d sold two small homes that were miles from the beach and couldn’t be considered vacation property. He’d sold a slightly larger house that had been lived in by a couple for close to sixty years and badly needed a new septic system in addition to all new appliances and a complete makeover.

“This isn’t working,” Georgia’s father finally said in disgust. Eight months after he returned from Kaycee’s, he left again. But two weeks later his car pulled into the driveway and he’d announced once more that he was home.

“Now what?” asked Mrs. Noble, shaking her head.

“I don’t know. Back to real estate, I suppose.”

“Back to real estate?” exclaimed Richard when he heard the news. It was late, eleven thirty on a school night, and Richard had just walked through the door. No one mentioned the fact that he had missed his curfew. “Don’t you sometimes wonder why we left Princeton?” he asked.

“Every day,” his father had replied, rubbing his eyes. “Every single day.”

Now Georgia blinked in the sunlight, having almost forgotten what her father had asked her. “Go into town?” she repeated. “I guess not. But thanks. I’m going to practice for a while.” She patted her guitar, which was sitting beside her on the bench. “Maybe Henry will go with you.”

Five minutes later Georgia watched her father and Henry stride down Blue Harbor, identical baseball caps worn backward on their heads. She picked up her guitar and strummed it thoughtfully. Her lessons with Mr. Elden were going well. She took only private lessons now that she was in middle school. When she’d graduated from the elementary school, she’d entertained the hope that Mr. Elden would move on to the middle school with her, but of course that hadn’t happened. He was a beloved fixture at BP Elementary. Georgia felt lucky that her parents always found a way to pay for her private lessons.

Now if she could just put together a band of her own. That was her dream: to play guitar in a band. But Penny and Talia, who took flute lessons, were hopeless and unenthusiastic musicians, and Ava, who had played keyboard in the elementary school band, had given that up, saying that her dog could play better than she could. (Privately, Georgia agreed with her.)

So Georgia sat on the bench and strummed and daydreamed and imagined outfits that she would one day wear onstage.

“Honey?” her mother called to her from the kitchen window. “Are you wearing sunblock?”

“No.” Georgia set down her guitar. “I was about to come inside, though.”

“What are you going to do today?”

“I don’t know. Nothing. Which is fine with me.”

The seventh graders had been burdened with homework lately, in addition to studying for final exams. Georgia was happy for a little island of freedom and free time.

She entered the cottage, which was cool and dim and smelled of fresh air and the warm days of spring, sat on her bed, and carefully put her guitar back in its case. She thought about the rosebushes again. She didn’t know why they kept creeping back into her thoughts.

Georgia’s mind flew to the journals she’d found two years earlier. She remembered skimming through the last one and discovering Nell’s awful secret — and then hastily closing them into their hiding place. She hadn’t looked at them since.

“The rosebushes,” Georgia said aloud. “Maybe I can read what Nell wrote about the babies.”

She crossed her room and quietly closed her door. Then she examined the panel on the wall. She realized she didn’t know how to open it. When Richard had thrown her boot at it two years ago, it had seemed to pop open on its own.

Georgia pressed the center of the panel lightly. Nothing happened.

She ran her fingers along the edges of the panel. Nothing.

She pressed the left side of the panel — and the right side sprang away from the wall. Georgia gripped the panel before it could fall to the floor. She placed it on her bed. Then she reached her hand into the dark space, but withdrew it quickly and reached for her flashlight as an image of her hand closing over a spider came to mind.

Georgia shined the light into the hole. There they were, in an untidy stack. Five ancient journals. She pulled out the top one, recalling that it was Nell’s last. Below it were the four earlier ones. Georgia set all five on her bed and once again arranged them chronologically. She wanted to read about the babies, the lost babies, but remembering what she had learned about the end of Nell’s life, she realized now that she wanted to start at the beginning and read the journals in order. She wanted to understand Nell. Georgia reached for the blue journal with the dangling spine and the broken clasp.

That was how Georgia Eleanor Goldberg Noble entered the life of her great-great-grandmother Eleanor Richmond Durbin at the end of 1917.

Georgia considered the date. Late 1917. Close to the end of the first world war. Although, she realized, back then it wouldn’t have been called World War One, because nobody knew there would be another world war. It was just the World War, she supposed. The war to end all wars.

In 1917 Eleanor Durbin was, as far as Georgia could tell, about eighteen years old. Georgia didn’t know when her great-great-grandmother had been born, but at the start of the journal, Nell was working in a milliner’s shop (it took Georgia some time to figure out that a milliner’s shop sold hats), and she had apparently graduated from high school recently.

Eighteen years old, already working, living with her parents, and no mention of going off to college. Nell was an adult, not quite independent yet, but she had moved into the next phase of her life. Georgia couldn’t imagine being in Nell’s situation in just five years.

The village where Nell lived with her parents was called St. George. Nell’s older sister, Betty, lived there, too, with her new husband, Marshall. Georgia had heard of St. George. It wasn’t far away, although it wasn’t any village now. It was a bustling town.

Not in 1917, though.

In 1917 the St. George described by Nell Durbin was even smaller than Lewisport was now, but it did have a few stores, and Georgia’s great-great-grandmother had worked in the hat shop. She had made hats and she had sold hats. And in the quiet moments between, she had dreamed about Ralph Saunders, a boy she had known since they were in third grade.

Perhaps my Ralph will come by the shop at the end of the day to walk me home, Nell wrote.

And in another entry: One day my Ralph and I will have the perfect wedding.

My Ralph, thought Georgia. How nice to have a boy you could call your own.

Nell wrote often about marrying Ralph. She recalled that they were in fourth grade the first time he proposed to her.

We held a wedding on the beach! she wrote giddily. I wore my best church dress and Ralph wore his best suit. We were barefoot. Betty, who was eleven, was the minister. Edward (Ralph’s brother, Georgia realized) was the ring bearer. Four of our classmates came to watch.

Apparently the ceremony had been slightly marred by two other boys from their class who had hidden behind some rocks on the beach and leaped out shrieking just as Ralph was about to slip a ring on Nell’s finger.

A ring of twined dandelion stems, Nell wrote. I thought it was the loveliest ring I’d ever seen.

Nell and Ralph had graduated from grammar school and gone on to high school in Barnegat Point. They’d been sweethearts from the day they entered until the day they graduated. And then Ralph had been called to join the army.

He was proud. Proud to be called to serve his country, even though the war should be coming to an end soon.

Before he left, he proposed to Nell again. This time the proposal was serious. Onto my finger he slipped a ring of silver with a tiny diamond chip in the center. He wanted to know if I would marry him when he came home. Of course I said yes. Of course!

Nell passed her days working in the hat shop and dreaming of her wedding and the life she and Ralph would have. They would move to Barnegat Point, she thought. A town bigger than St. George would be nice.

We will live in a little house near the center of town. We’ll have three children. A boy, a girl, and another boy. The first boy will be named Ralph. The girl will be named Eleanor. And the second boy, I think, should be named James. Or maybe Jonathan.

Then one evening not long after Nell had arrived home from the hat shop, a knock had come at the door. The Durbins were eating supper, and Nell’s mother was displeased by the interruption.

“I’d better see who it is,” said Nell. She folded her napkin and set it by her plate.

Then she opened the front door.

There are some things a person doesn’t ever forget. Images that stay in your mind like a photograph. That scene … Edward standing on the porch with his hat in his hands, his head bowed. The image is in black and white and brown.

Nell felt her knees buckle then, but she remained standing. She embraced Edward after he had given her the news and then she went inside to tell her family that Ralph wouldn’t be coming home. His plane had been shot down, and although his body hadn’t been found and he was listed as missing in action, he was presumed dead.

Georgia thought that this entry would be followed by pages and pages of grief, by descriptions of a memorial service, perhaps, of tearful conversations with Betty.

Instead there was a long gap. Days went by. Then this abrupt note:

I have had to let go of the dream of our future together.