Today is a day of forgetting. I have also forgotten that I am only in this place temporarily, borrowing six days from Texas, and my future, and all the responsibilities that roll out before me in a blanket meant to comfort but that feels more like prolonged smothering.

I look out the window of the truck and try to ignore Wally’s distant excited barks. It’s a demanding sound, an insistent come-and-play, but I feel like my conversation with Alex isn’t finished.

I’m about to get out of the truck and let the moment pass when Alex says, “Amelia?”

“Yeah?”

He’s staring at me again, like I’m a puzzle and if he can just flip the correct switch I’ll be complete and whole.

“What?” I ask, when he doesn’t say more.

“Nothing,” Alex says, and he leans back in the seat and starts the engine. “Nothing. I’ve got to get back to working on the bazaar. We’ll see each other later.”

There’s a smile hiding in his eyes as I slip from the cab. I give a halfhearted wave to Alex and walk down the rocky slope to the sand. The truck roars into motion as soon as I’m out of sight.

Wally’s barks float from the trees and my eyes trail upward to where the wind is pushing the branches sharply away from the water. The distant dark clouds promise buckets of water, should they make it across the lake to Lochbrook. How strange that one day I am in Dallas, tucked neatly into my untidy world, and the next I am transported to an entirely different place. There are no tall buildings here, no police sirens, no smell of asphalt melting in the Texas sun, and no lingering suggestions of Jenna’s presence, like her house or Downtown Books.

The whales drift, their underbellies skirting the tops of the trees, before swimming off toward the storms with a confidence that comes from being too immovable for weather or time or a girl’s problems.

“Amelia?”

I jump, a hand flying dramatically to my heart like a goofy southern belle from a movie.

“Nolan.” His first name is startled out of me at his sudden appearance. It’s what Alex and Valerie call him, when Valerie isn’t calling him “that boy,” and I find it’s what feels most right.

He doesn’t correct me.

He’s managed to sneak up on me by emerging from the foliage that lines the beach, appearing like one of the tree knights from the Orman Chronicles, from one of his own books. He stands beside me, following my gaze to the trees, a look of confusion on his face.

“Bird-watching?”