“But I am,” he says. “I could have prevented it.”

“You don’t know that,” I argue.

“Of course I do! I was supposed to be watching them, but I had better things to do, so they died.” His voice flickers between outrage and fear, sadness and despair.

“We can’t die in their stead,” I say, tears muddling my voice. I’m on my hands and knees, facing him, pleading with him, with myself. “We can’t. No matter how much we want to or how much easier it would be, we can’t take their places. We have to learn to live like this, Nolan. For their sake. And for ours.”

We’re both breathing hard, our rising voices fusing with the sound of the chimes, a distressed, clanging noise that causes the whales to forget to rise to the surface for air.

Sorry doesn’t help. And there is nothing you can say to someone who is hurting to make them feel better. Jenna is not here, and neither are Emily and Avery, and words—no matter how eloquent or pleading—will not bring them back.

Instead I say, “You sent them to Orman, didn’t you?”

It clicks together like the easiest of children’s puzzles, with a space for each distinct shape cut out in a slab of wood. Emily and Avery were transformed into Emmeline and Ainsley and swept off in a magic boat to Orman.

“I did,” Nolan says, so quietly I almost can’t hear him above the wind chimes.

“So when Jenna found you…” I trail off. I don’t need to finish.

“It was the water,” he says. “It’s always the water. I looked out the window at the Pacific and could see them playing in the waves. It—” He stops, taking a deep breath. “It wasn’t the first time I’ve seen them drown, but it doesn’t ever get easier, that part of it. I saw them get pulled under and disappear. And, like my therapist told me to, I let myself see them rise up together, inside the magical canoe from Orman as it broke the waves, sailing out to sea. But this time the canoe broke beneath them and they drowned again. Twice in less than five minutes.”

I rub his wrist with my thumb. There’s nothing to say.

“The only thing I could think, standing at that window, was how I was about to give away the last parts of them I have, the last story, the last everything. I would have to say good-bye to Orman, but also good-bye to them. I couldn’t visit them in the forests or castles again, couldn’t drop in when I felt lonely or sad or … or…” He releases another huff of angry air. “God, aren’t authors supposed to have all the words?” He tries to force a laugh, but it comes out more like a sob.

“Broken?” I offered. “You couldn’t go to them when you felt broken anymore.”

He nods, a short decisive tick. “Yes, Amelia. Broken.”