Nola asked Dad if people could make money from writing songs, and he asked why did she need to make money? They weren’t poor; they were rich with love. Nola didn’t say that she wanted money to have their house fixed. In the big house, people always came to fix things that didn’t even look broken, or to paint walls that weren’t chipped, or to plant gardens where no one but she ever walked. Even the huge lawn around the big house was bright green, not like the scraggly yard near their cottage, which was on the other side of a horse barn that no longer had any horses. Mom said that was a blessing because she hated the odor of manure. But Dad was saving up to buy a horse and dreamed of moving the family to a ranch in Colorado where they would work the land. Nola didn’t understand why, he couldn’t work the land right around their house, but she didn’t ask, because he was home now between gigs and taught her how to drum, until Mom told them to stop and for Nola to go outside because she was noisy.

The Nissequogue estate sat at the edge of a high cliff overlooking the Sound. Long Island, Nola had learned in school, was shaped like a giant whale. It was separated from a state called Connecticut by the Sound. On clear days, she could see Connecticut from the cliff and wondered whether another girl just like her was standing there right now and looking back at her.

Getting down to the beach was tricky, because the wooden staircase, which had been built before the old man had become old, had many missing steps. Nola clung to the jagged cliff and stepped in gaps in the rock, even though Dad had warned her that she could kill herself and shouldn’t even think of going down to the beach.

How could she not think of something after being told not to think about it? Besides, at the beach, where the sand squooshed between her toes, she had discovered a cave made of a large overhang rock, with driftwood on the floor and a carpet of pretty shells. There was a hush in the cave, and when she sang, her voice echoed, so it sounded like there were two of her singing, not quite in harmony, more like one Nola chasing another Nola. Could the girl in Connecticut hear her? She sang louder and louder. Maybe that girl really did hear her, and that echo wasn’t one Nola chasing another, but that other girl singing back to her.

Nothing in her life had been as exciting as when she was eight and Jenna was born. Mom, who, for weeks after stayed in bed instead of on her floor pillows, said Jenna was another accident.