I rub her shoulder with my cheek. Her fresh-from-the-shower curls, still damp and docile, smell of organic mint shampoo. “Nah. We’ll pick another to do together. Maybe one where I can be a cat,” I joke and, feeling a vibration, pull the phone from my jeans. The call is from the area code where I grew up. Just the sight of it brings a whoosh to the pit of my stomach. And at this hour? Not good. But neither my father’s name nor my sister’s appears, and I don’t recognize the number. Spam? Possibly. Or not. My father isn’t well, and given that my sister is ditsy, it could be one of his doctors. Or the hospital. Or neither.

Suspicious of the last, I click into the call expecting a robo-silence, and jerk when my name hits me fast.

“Mallory.” Not a question, but a statement in a voice that is deep and tight, familiar but not. The whoosh in my stomach becomes a twist. Rhode Island is a small state, the town of Westerly smaller, its villages even smaller. I tell myself that this voice could belong to any one of the dozens of people I’d known growing up. But my gut says something else.

Standing, I move to the far side of the tripod and say a cautious, “Yes?”

“It’s Jack.”

I know that, I think, and I barely breathe. Jack Sabathian grew up on the shore, just like us. He was my best friend once, but we haven’t talked since I left, and while his voice is older now, I feel the force of memory fighting its way through the tangle of time.