When Mia had been young, very young, it had conjured up images of explorers setting off to untamed lands, not knowing if death or untold fortune would be their reward.

As she got older, it became a space that protected her rebellion, held it carefully within its walls, and never let it slip out to be devoured by town gossips.

She’d had sex for the first time in the tower, on a Bishop family quilt, her skin sticky from the salt that had dried after their swim earlier in the day.

She’d stood at the railing and touched flasks with Asher, who had lost his virginity three days before her.

She’d watched the sun set and the sun rise and the storms roll in through the glass panes that had been warped and distorted with age.

She’d cut her wrist in the living room of that house, the razor stinging against skin that gave way beneath blade far too easily. She didn’t remember anything else about that day, but she did remember the slice of metal against flesh. How simple it had been. Too simple.

The lighthouse.

Her cheeks were wet, and she swiped at them with her gloves, only then realizing she’d come to a stop. Izzy didn’t say anything, just let her be.

“We came out here all the time,” Mia said as the wind howled and tried to steal her words, tried to inhale them for itself, greedy and selfish as it was. “That night was no different.”

What would she even be able to say? Mia didn’t know, so she started forward once more. There was an open expanse—a meadow in the summertime but a desolate plain in winter—between where they stood at the line of the trees and the small structure on the very edge of the land.

Her head down, Mia pressed forward against the gusts off the ocean. The wind cut through the layers of clothing, biting at her skin despite her efforts to protect it. There would be no more talking until they escaped the weather.

The door was locked, but she knew where the key was hidden. The third rock in the space that was meant to house a garden. She would have broken the window if she had to. But thankfully, like everything else, the hiding space hadn’t changed.

The silence of the room was stark after the roar of the wind.

The place was small, with a dust-coated green sofa facing a fireplace that must not have been used in years. There were maps on the wall, tinted a tea color and framed like they were actually worth something.

They’d huddled there, they must have. She and Monroe and Asher. What had they talked about? What had those last words been?

Whenever she tried too hard to reach for them, she was met with a thick, impenetrable fog.