CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

This was how Zoe was like Nola: she could sleep forever. Willow would go into her mom’s room to wake her, only to be swatted away. Then she sat on the hard wooden chair beside the single bed in the room with its slanted ceiling, watching Mom sleep until Nana called her downstairs for breakfast.

She sat there not because it was so interesting, watching Mom sleep—she slept like a dead person, with one arm tossed over her face like it weighed fifty pounds—but because Willow always hoped she could watch her mom’s face and tell what she was dreaming about. Or maybe she would hear her talk in her sleep.

It bothered her that she didn’t know what Mom was thinking. In this way, Zoe was very different from Nola, who was always on some kind of panty rant. And from Catherine, who was always TMI-ing. Though, right now, Willow was surprised to find herself missing Catherine. A lot. In the last five years, she had spent every holiday and birthday and summer vacation with Catherine. Catherine always knew how to make a holiday special. Any day, really.

If Catherine were here, they’d make something the Pilgrims made, like brown bread in a can or squash muffins, or she’d ask Willow to help her draw and cut out paper Pilgrim hats or at least some turkey decorations. One year they’d made turkeys out of pine cones and leftover candy corn from Halloween.

Maybe Nana would help her at least make place mats for the table now that Darcy said he was going to roast a turkey. Willow had plenty of white paper and she’d brought her markers and watercolors.

“Why do you sleep so much?” she finally asked Zoe on their second morning at the house in Chance Harbor, when Zoe came slouching downstairs in an old sweatshirt and flannel pajama pants, then shuffled along the kitchen counter as if she had to feel her way to the coffee.

Zoe peered at her through half-lidded eyes. “Why do you get up so damn early and make such an insane racket?” she said, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

“I’m a kid.”

“You’re not a kid. You’re fourteen!”

“Fifteen,” Willow corrected.

She could tell by the way Zoe jerked her head up that she really had forgotten.

“You’re not, like, using anything, are you?” Willow asked, watching Zoe continue her slow zombie walk over to the fridge to get milk for her coffee.

Her mom snorted. “What would I be using? There’s nothing up here and I don’t have a car. I’d have to be smoking potato skins.”

This made Willow laugh, but barely.

She and Zoe had spent the previous day stripping the smallest bedroom of old wallpaper and putting up fresh. Willow loved everything about this process: soaking the paper and peeling it off in strips, discovering the layers underneath, scraping and sanding the walls smooth. If this were her house, she’d leave those patches of ancient patterns and colors on the white walls. But Nana had brought rolls of new paper, so she and Zoe helped with this, too, measuring and cutting strips and helping Nana sponge and glue them into place.

Darcy worked with them sometimes, too. He was fun to have around, telling dumb jokes she hadn’t heard since third grade: “Why did the little red house call the doctor?”

“Because it had window panes!”

The thought of how she’d gone to Mike’s house, assuming he was her dad, still made Willow question her own sanity. She should have known that it was too good to be true. Her real dad was probably a drug addict. Or dead! Sometimes she woke up at night and felt the bones of her face, squinching her eyes shut to picture herself better. Did she look like Zoe? Her grandparents? What part of her didn’t belong to this family? Her dad could have been anybody and anything: Egyptian. Mexican. Irish. A cop. A homeless guy. A drunk. A hero.

It wasn’t until Darcy and Nana went off to buy more groceries that she and Zoe were finally left alone in the house. They were finishing up in the last bedroom when Willow decided to keep asking questions until she got the answers she needed.

“If my dad isn’t Mike, then who is he?” Willow said.

“I told you, all right? I don’t know,” Zoe said, but she wouldn’t look at Willow, so she was probably lying.

“What about this?” Willow said. “Just count back nine months from when I was born and list all the guys you hooked up with during that time, okay? There can’t be that many, unless you were a prostitute.”

“Jesus, Willow. I should smack you upside the head for saying that.” Zoe was staring at her now, with a strip of wallpaper in her hand. The wallpaper was green and white striped; earlier Zoe had said the wallpaper made her feel like they were inside a Christmas candy. “How could you think I’d have sex for money?”

Because you bought a lot of drugs and we were always broke, Willow thought, but that wasn’t an argument she wanted to have. “You have to tell me who my dad was, Mom,” she said. “What if my dad died of cancer or a heart attack? Or had Parkinson’s or ALS? They can do things for diseases now if you catch them early. Don’t you want to help me stay healthy?”

“Christ. You really have spent too much time with Catherine,” Zoe muttered, holding up the strip of paper for Willow to press into place.

“It’s not fair to blame her for everything.”

“Sure I can. Somebody has to! Perfect Miss Catherine can do no wrong. I’ve been hearing that since I was born.”

Willow bit her bottom lip, focusing for a minute on lining up the stripes. This wasn’t easy, since the old floor slanted and so did the ceiling, but she did the best she could. “Let’s not talk about her, okay?”

“So that’s how it is,” Zoe said. “You’re on her side. Like everybody else.”

“Mom!” Willow said sharply. “Stop! This has nothing to do with her, okay? I need to know who my father was. Why can’t you just tell me?”

“Because I don’t know who he was!” Zoe shouted back, then fell to her knees, face in her hands, tipping over the bucket of warm water they’d been using to sponge the wallpaper into place.

Willow ran into the bathroom for a towel. By the time she returned to the room, her mother had disappeared. She mopped up the mess, then went in search of her, stomach churning. Zoe was sitting on the floor of her old bedroom, her arms wrapped around her knees. Willow was scared at first—she’d found her mother rocking on the floor in that position a few times, usually during bad trips when she was hallucinating—but when Zoe looked up, her eyes were focused and a very sharp blue, like bits of bright sky showing through clouds.

“I’m sorry I upset you.” Willow dropped to the floor and rested her hand on her mother’s damp leg.

“You shouldn’t have to comfort me,” her mother said. “You’re the kid! I’m the mother!”

Willow shook her head, remembering what Catherine had said once when Willow had come home upset about something at school, listing all the reasons she was dumb and worthless.

“Don’t worry,” she said, repeating Catherine’s words. “I’ve got your back, and we’ll get through this together.”

Zoe snorted and lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “We won’t, though. Not if I tell you the truth.”

“Why not? Mom, please.”

“If you know something, you can’t ever unknow it.”

“Obviously! Come on. Just say it.” Willow patted her mother’s leg, feeling awkward, then swiveled to face her. “It’s just you and me here. Nobody else is listening.”

“How you came into the world?” Her mom’s expression turned dreamy. “You always tried to make things easy for me, even on that day. You gave me plenty of warning and my body did the work. I just went along for the ride. No drugs. Done in a few hours. You didn’t even cry when you were born, not like those horrible babies you see in movies. You were chubby and red and very pleased with yourself for finding your way into the world. You were completely yourself from the start.”

Willow smiled. Her mother had told her this story many times, but now she could picture it better, maybe because she had seen Nola’s belly grow. She let her eyes drop to her own mother’s slender waist. How was it possible that she’d once been part of her mother’s body?

“So he wasn’t there when I was born,” she said, double-checking. “My dad.”

Her mother’s face closed again. “No. Your father was not there. He doesn’t know you exist.”

Willow had figured as much, but hearing this still made her feel lost. Forgotten. “Why not? Why didn’t you call him?”

“Because we weren’t involved.” Zoe looked sad, and that made her look older, the lines around her eyes and mouth sketched in deeply, as if some invisible hand were working on her with a sharp black pencil. “Look, here’s the truth. I hardly knew the guy. The pregnancy was an accident. Mike and I had broken up and I was sad, so I went to a party and hooked up. That’s all there is to the story, baby. I’m sorry. I don’t know your dad’s name or what happened to him after that.”

“Nothing?”

Mom shook her head. “All I remember is that he seemed smart and sweet.” She reached out to Willow, touched her knee. “And cute, too. It didn’t matter to me that I didn’t have a husband. Or a boyfriend. I was happy to have you on my own. Gave me a great excuse to drop out of school. I always hated school.”

Willow knew her mom was lying again. But why? And about what? “So you’re saying I’m the product of you fucking some hot guy at a party, and you never tried to see him again?”

Zoe lowered her eyes. “Yes.”

“Nice.” Willow stood up suddenly, her chest aching. So this was it. The beginning and the end of her story: she didn’t have a dad, only an irresponsible party mom. “You meant to have sex that night, to forget about Mike. But not to get pregnant. I was a total accident.”

“Yes, but a welcome one.”

“So welcome that you couldn’t even stop doing drugs!” Willow hurled the words at her, as if the words were bones she had to spit out of her mouth. “You loved having a baby so much that you gave me to your sister! Well, you know what? You did the right thing. Catherine deserves to have a daughter, not you!”

Mutely, Zoe nodded, keeping her eyes fixed on the floor between her knees.

“Okay. We cleared that up, I guess,” Willow said. “You’re off the hook.”

Zoe looked up finally. “I’m trying to be good,” she said. “I came back for you, didn’t I?”

“Trying to be good isn’t the same thing as being good,” Willow said. “I love you, but I’m not taking care of you. I’m done with that. You have to learn how to take care of yourself, and so do I.”

Willow left her mother on the floor like a forgotten doll and ran downstairs, feeling a little bit bad, but good, too. She was free.

•   •   •

Bethany woke her out of a sound sleep, using her key to get into the house and coming right upstairs into the bedroom to shake Catherine’s shoulder. “Okay, get up,” she said. “You can’t be like this.”

“I don’t know how else to be.” Catherine pulled the pillow over her head.

She’d taken Thanksgiving week off from work, ostensibly to sort out her finances and decide what strategy to follow if Zoe came back from Chance Harbor saying she wanted custody of Willow. She’d thought she might see Grey, too, and figure things out with him.

What she hadn’t counted on was the sudden avalanche of emotions that had rolled over her the minute Willow left with Zoe and her mother, as suddenly as if she were standing at the bottom of a mountain during an explosion. She was drowning in these petty, irrational, juvenile feelings and didn’t know how to stay above any of them. There was jealousy, first and foremost: every time she imagined her sister walking the beach below the Chance Harbor house with Willow, or cooking in the kitchen with their mother—roles only Catherine had played for the past five years—she was suffused with a hot, choking jealous rage that she knew was beneath her, and useless besides.

Then, on the heels of her jealousy, there was loneliness. She felt more intensely alone than she could remember feeling at any other time in her life, even that first terrifying week at the university. Part of it was physical: Catherine hadn’t been alone in this house for more than one or two nights at a time since kicking Russell out. Now the rooms loomed large around her, and her steps echoed on the bare wooden floors as if she were walking through a castle. She had to take the batteries out of the ticking clock on the kitchen wall because each ticktock was like a dart shot into her skin. Part of the problem was her imagination: Catherine could see a time when she would have to grant Willow’s wish to live with Zoe, and if she did, this was what it would feel like to live alone. She felt purposeless, abandoned, forgotten.

It was tempting to see Grey. But Catherine had decided against spending time with him after all. That would be a crutch, and she didn’t want to give herself any false expectations. There could be no relationship there, period. Grey was Zoe’s friend. And if Willow ended up living with Zoe, Catherine would feel better if Zoe could lean on Grey when she needed support.

Still, even recognizing all of these emotions, Catherine was shocked by her own weakness. She told herself, almost hourly, that she was not this sort of person. She had never been prone to depression, flu, cramps, or any other thing that might keep her pinned between the sheets. Each morning, she made herself get up, shower, comb her hair, dress, and eat breakfast. But then she took her clothes off again and went right back to bed, where she fell as if shot and went into a near coma.

Everything that Catherine had once considered bedrock in her life had crumbled. Not slowly, and not bit by bit, but with the sudden, deafening finality of dynamite felling a condemned building in a noisy pile of rubble and dust.

So she slept. When Russell called to ask if he could see her, she told him no, she had the flu. When Grey called, she felt suffused with guilt all over again about what he’d told her, about how Zoe had been through such a horrible thing without her support. Grey asked if he could see her, too.

“Oh, what’s the point?” she’d responded. “Everything is such a mess.”

“What is?”

“Me! I’m a mess.”

“Maybe I could help you,” he said.

“No. I’m sorry. I like you. I do. But I need to sort things out on my own,” she said, and hung up.

She was convinced that her desire for Grey—as powerful as it was—amounted to nothing more than that: physical sensations. Around Grey, she felt wanton, hedonistic, and giddily irresponsible. That couldn’t possibly be real.

Her mother had phoned last night to ask again if she could join them for Thanksgiving. She had even offered to pay for a plane ticket so Catherine wouldn’t have to drive to Prince Edward Island alone. She had politely declined this as well, then asked to speak with Willow a few minutes.

The girl sounded fine. Happy. She didn’t seem to need Catherine anymore. What a terrible, sad relief that was.

But Bethany was different. They’d known each other too long for Bethany to be fooled by anything Catherine did or said. No matter how hard Catherine ever tried to hide from the world, she was certain Bethany would find her. Whether she was in bed or meditating in a mountain cave, Bethany would drag her kicking and screaming into the light.

Which was what she did now. Three days after Willow left for Chance Harbor, Bethany arrived and literally tugged Catherine out of bed by the hand and made her get dressed in a way that reminded Catherine of how efficient and practical her friend had been in college and nursing school, using index cards and colored markers. These days Bethany was a take-no-prisoners sort of geriatric nurse practitioner, and that, too, was obvious as Bethany literally forced Catherine’s arms and legs into the holes of clothing she barely recognized.

Then, properly buttoned and combed and zipped, Catherine found herself sitting at the kitchen table with a pot of coffee between herself and her best friend. As Bethany chattered idly about her new workout routine at the gym—this was an evergreen topic with her—Catherine felt suddenly alert. She was awake, focused, and terrified.

Bethany must have sensed the change, because she began asking questions instead of talking about herself. Catherine told her everything, then sighed. “This is why I can’t go anywhere or see anyone,” she said. “I feel like my skin’s on inside out.”

“What does that even mean?”

“That I feel raw. Exposed.” Catherine struggled to explain. “Everything’s hard. Everything hurts. Bottom line: my life isn’t the way I thought it would be.”

Bethany laughed. “Welcome to my world. Do you think I expected to have twins so soon after my first kid? Or that I thought I’d get a promotion at work the same month my day care provider got arrested for embezzlement? Honey, having the world be different from our expectations is pretty much the definition of life.”

Catherine made a face at her. “Which fortune cookie did you get that out of?”

“Come on. You know what I mean. You’ve never been naive. You’re the most grounded person I know!”

“And where has that gotten me? I’m about to be divorced, Willow’s going to want to live with Zoe, and I can’t even be mad at my sister because now I feel too sorry for her. Plus, I’ve been having sex with a gypsy, for God’s sake. A guy who’s Zoe’s roommate and totally wrong for me.”

“You can still be mad,” Bethany said. “Zoe had a terrible experience. Horrible, really. But if that had happened to you or me, I doubt we would have done drugs and given up our children.” She caught Catherine’s shocked look, but didn’t back down. “Just saying.”

“That’s my point, though. It didn’t happen to me. But that was just lucky. Grey says Zoe wasn’t high or drunk when she got raped. Just with the wrong friend at the wrong party. You and I both got into situations like that. If things had turned ugly, who knows what we would have done? Or been like after?”

“Well, we’ll never have to know that, thankfully,” Bethany said, “but you can’t sit around in the house. This isn’t helping you decide anything.”

“Decide what, though? Everything is out of my control. Zoe and Willow and Russell will do whatever they want. All I can do is react.”

“Not necessarily. By wallowing here, don’t you think you’re being a little bit like Zoe?” Bethany reached across the table to pat her hand.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve pretty much abandoned Willow, Catherine! She acted out. Ran away. Shoplifted. You know why? She wanted your attention. But you’ve completely shut her out in the cold by acting like you don’t care if you spend Thanksgiving with her or not.”

“I thought it was the right thing to do! To give her time with Zoe,” Catherine said, confused. “Free of my interference.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe Willow wants your interference? You’re the one who’s always telling me that my teenagers feel free to say they hate me because they know I’ll always be there. Maybe that’s what this is about. Maybe Willow isn’t really trying to find her father as much as she’s testing people to see who really cares about her.”

“I think I’ve made it clear to Willow that I’ll do everything in my power to keep her safe.”

“That’s not quite the same thing as telling her that you want her to live with you, but you’ll always love her no matter what happens.”

Catherine pulled her hand away from Bethany’s. Her chest felt tight, imagining Willow in Chance Harbor without her. Without knowing what was going to happen. “God. How can you be so right?”

“Because we’re not talking about my life here,” Bethany said. “We’re talking about yours. I suck at giving myself advice. And I’m even worse at taking it.”

Bethany stayed with Catherine while she made the phone call to Eve. Her mother didn’t pick up; Catherine left a message saying she’d decided to come for Thanksgiving after all, then hung up, feeling shaky.

“Are you sure this is the right thing?” she asked.

Bethany put her arms around her, rested her chin on Catherine’s shoulder. Her body felt round and solid against Catherine’s. “I am,” she said. “Remember. You don’t have to do anything or say anything to Zoe. All you have to do is be there with Willow. You’ve been her mother for five years. Don’t quit now.”

“But I’m not her mother.”

“You have been her mother in every way that matters,” Bethany insisted, giving her a little squeeze before she released her. “Especially in the worry department. Now, get packing. And I want you to promise me you’ll stop and see Grey on your way north.”

“What would be the point of that?”

Bethany shrugged. “Do you like this gypsy man?”

“Yes.”

“Does he treat you right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love getting naked with him?” Bethany gave her a wicked grin.

Catherine grinned back.

“So, what’s the problem?” Bethany gave her another little shove. “Go tell him how you feel! Catherine, honey, you have spent way too many years being responsible. For once, follow your heart instead of your head. Let yourself enjoy the moment instead of worrying about what might come next.”

An hour later, Catherine’s heart was thudding in her throat as she stopped at the trailer park on her way north. She was equally relieved and despondent to discover that Grey wasn’t there.

As she was trying to find paper in her car to leave a note, a small blue sedan pulled up in front of the mobile home. Madame Justine stepped out of it wearing a full-length, tan quilted down coat. She looked like a bratwurst with feet.

“You want my son,” she said.

Catherine hoped Grey’s mother didn’t know how literally true this was. “Yes,” she said. “I stopped by to tell him happy Thanksgiving. I’m driving north to spend it with my mom and Zoe and Willow.”

The other woman nodded. “You will get in my car,” she said. “I will take you to him.”

“Oh, no. I couldn’t bother you.”

“You must,” Madame Justine insisted. “You are the one,” she added ominously. “The healer. I have seen you in my son’s cards. The High Priestess.”

Whatever that meant. Reluctantly, Catherine slid into the seat next to Madame Justine, whose scent—something spicy, with a hint of coconut and lime—filled the car. Catherine’s sinuses, clogged from being in bed for three days straight, cleared instantly.

“I really should be getting on the road,” she said, “if I’m going to make it to Prince Edward Island in time for Thanksgiving.”

“You will make it.” Madame Justine drove like a pro, her hands fluid on the wheel, her foot heavy on the gas, passing other cars smoothly and at a speed that made Catherine grip her seat beneath her thighs.

Catherine wondered whether the woman was well-known in town. She’d have to be, if she told fortunes on the boardwalk. Sure enough, a minute later they passed a state police car, and the two cops inside it waved, grinning. Madame Justine lifted one hand off the wheel just long enough to grace them with a queenly flutter of her plump fingers.

“Where are we going?” Catherine said.

“I will take you to my son’s house.”

“But I thought he lived in the trailer park. With my sister.”

Madame Justine’s smile was bountiful. “Not anymore. He is in his own house now. Since last week.”

They had backtracked south from Salisbury Beach and were now turning onto Ring’s Island. The island overlooked Newburyport’s brick and church-steepled skyline on the other side of the Merrimack River. Catherine had been here only twice before, when she was little and her parents took her and Zoe to watch the fireworks.

Once a Colonial fishing village, Ring’s Island was now a tiny enclave of restored antique houses set close to the curb along narrow streets. Grey’s house was on the water, a classic Colonial painted deep red with silvery teal trim. It was surrounded by a picket fence stained a warm gold and capped in copper. The copper weather vane on the barn roof was shaped like a dinghy.

Catherine could hear an electric power tool buzzing in the barn when Madame Justine shut off the car engine. “You will find Grey inside there,” she said, gesturing with her chin. “He is waiting for you.”

“But he didn’t know I was coming.”

Madame Justine smiled. “I told him you would be here.”

To Catherine’s shock, the minute she was out of the car, Madame Justine began pulling out of the driveway. Great. Now she’d have to ask Grey to give her a ride back to her car.

Catherine studied the building’s classic lines and new roof, the expensive landscaping, the new asphalt driveway, and couldn’t believe it was Grey’s house. It had to have at least four bedrooms, given the number of windows, and the view of the river and the city was spectacular.

She made her way up a brick walk laid in a herringbone pattern—this also looked new—and called Grey’s name when she opened the barn door.

He was inside, dressed in jeans and a thick blue sweater dotted with wood shavings. He wore a mask over his face, but lifted it when he saw her, grinning over the boat hull he’d been sanding. “So my mother was right. She said you’d come.”

“I don’t know whether it would be creepy or useful, having a fortune-teller for a mother.” Catherine couldn’t help grinning back.

“It’s good when my fortune is favorable.” He set down the sander and came over to her.

“I came to say good-bye.” Catherine felt suddenly nervous.

Grey stopped smiling. “Why? Where are you going?”

“I’m on my way to Chance Harbor to spend Thanksgiving.”

Grey’s face relaxed. “Good. I’m glad. You and Zoe need to work this out.”

“I can’t promise that will happen.”

He stepped forward and embraced her, resting his chin on top of her head, holding her in place so effectively that she felt rooted to the spot, breathing in sawdust. “You’ll try, though,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Good. Want a coffee before you go?”

“All right.”

As the coffee brewed, Grey showed her the new kitchen cupboards he was building out of refurbished barn boards. “There were two barns on the property originally,” he said, “but one was in such bad shape, I didn’t have any choice but to tear it down.”

“I can’t believe you’re doing all this yourself,” she said. “And I’m still having trouble believing that you’re a gypsy, living in a house like this.”

He looked amused. “Why?”

“I don’t know. This house seems so grand and permanent.”

“Not a place for gypsies, tramps, and thieves, huh?”

“A rolling stone,” she amended. “That’s what I thought all gypsies were.”

He pulled her close and kissed her. “I’m a rolling stone that favors a particular riverbank. And one particular woman.” He kissed her again.

This time, when Grey pulled away Catherine moved closer. Bethany was right: life was made up of moments, and maybe this one could be hers. She wouldn’t worry about after.

She was the one to lead them upstairs. They made love in Grey’s bedroom, with its windows letting in the milky autumn light, in a cherry sleigh bed piled high with quilts. Afterward, they curled up together on the window seat overlooking the river, which was rapidly darkening beneath the afternoon sky, a black ribbon now edged in silver.

“It’s too late for you to go now,” Grey murmured. “You’ll have to spend the night.”

She shook her head. “I can still make it to Bangor.”

“I could drive you to Chance Harbor in my Porsche. Fast.”

This was tempting. But something inside her resisted. This had to be her journey. “I’ll see you when I get back,” she promised, and knew she would.

Grey drove her back to Newburyport. From there it took her three hours to get to Bangor, where she stayed in a hotel room that smelled of chlorine. She didn’t care; she sank into a deep sleep and woke before the alarm she’d set for six o’clock.

The drive to Prince Edward Island was hellishly long without company. She sang with the radio or argued with talk-show hosts to keep herself awake. For lunch she stopped for fish and chips at a small New Brunswick restaurant overlooking the Bay of Fundy.

Every meal, every scene along the road, reminded her of family trips to Chance Harbor. Of her parents talking in the front seat while she and Zoe rode in back and argued or played word games or, sometimes, took turns tracing letters on each other’s narrow backs, trying to guess the words they were writing.

Catherine remembered, as she continued along the Bay of Fundy’s dramatic shoreline, how they had always stopped for smoked salmon at a tiny family-run smokehouse down one of the side roads leading to a cove. The smokehouse was built of cinder blocks and painted yellow, like some kind of Lego house. The giant rosebush in front of it attracted hummingbirds by the dozen.

They would pack the salmon into a cooler and then drive to the end of that road, to a remote rocky cove with a series of small humpbacked islands rising out of the water like turtles surfacing. It was always foggy there, making the colored fishing boats look even brighter.

Despite the icy water, she and Zoe would take off their shoes, not minding the rocks because they were smooth and slippery. Their bare feet and ankles were soon numbed by the water. Water so cold that the pain roared up their skinny legs and into their spines, a sudden shock of sensation that made them laugh.

Their mother waded with them while their father made sandwiches of salmon and onion and butter on thick crusty bread. Then they’d eat, their family alone in that forgotten misty cove. Their own world. Happy.

And then, one day, they were not happy. Zoe was a teenager and acting out. Her parents were bitter and scared, alienated from each other. Their marriage—now that Catherine had more perspective on it, she could see this—had gone sour. They had stayed together out of sheer stubbornness and loyalty. But maybe that was a form of love. She could see that now, too.

Marriage was such a tricky thing. A creature all its own, separate in many ways from the two people who created it. Like a child, a marriage had to be nurtured and fed, and even then it could have unexpected traits, inherited or brought on by environment.

A marriage could be happy and calm, or petty and jealous, or angry and removed. A separate being that grew bigger and stronger on its own, apart from the couple who made it. Or, alternatively, the marriage became malnourished and eventually withered and died. You could try to mold a marriage into what you wanted and expected. But, sometimes, all the willpower in the world wasn’t enough to save it. Triage came too late. That’s how it was with Russell. She could never go back to him now.

By the time Catherine reached Chance Harbor, she had exhausted herself not only by driving steadily forward with so few breaks, but also from performing these mental gymnastics. Her reveries about love and marriage and family had led her exactly nowhere.

Or maybe they had, she thought, as she slammed the car door behind her and stood in front of the yellow house, where Willow, spotting her from the window, came bounding outside like a colt, all skinny legs and hopeful face.

Maybe her life, her marriage, had led her exactly here, to a place where she could open her arms wide and welcome this girl who was like a daughter to her, to say, “I’m so glad to see you. I missed you like crazy. I hope you know how much I love you.”