Nic reached for the car door, opened it, but then pulled it shut. She stared at the inn with its white porch and red shutters. Four days she’d spent here with her father. Four days that had just been the start of the dismantling of the life they’d hobbled together after Annie died. The cornerstone of that new, disfigured life was her mother soaking up whatever abuse they handed out. She could see that now. Nic had been cruel to her. She’d paraded her bad behavior with fantastic fanfare, and massacred any attempts her mother made to help with harsh vulgarities.

Now that she was gone, Nic had nothing to fill the hollow spaces anymore. Her bad behavior lacked an audience.

You’re not your mother, her father had texted. You don’t owe your life to Annie’s death.

But he had no idea. He hadn’t been there the day Annie died. He didn’t know what Nic owed her death. Owed to her.

He wasn’t the one who’d seen Annie running away from the house, hair flying around her face. Then looking back with a mischievous smile. Running. Smiling. Reaching the end of the driveway. He hadn’t been the first to see the car. To know what was about to happen. Annie!

Her mother had been racing home from work because Nic hadn’t answered the phone. She’d been in charge of them, Annie and Evan. And at sixteen, she’d had things to do—serious things back then when she still cared about her life. It wasn’t as though they were babies. But Annie was so precocious. She never listened.

She’d wanted ice cream. She’d heard the truck. And she’d run.

Her father hadn’t been there. He hadn’t heard Nic screaming for her to stop. Too far away to reach her. The screeching tires on the asphalt. Annie lying in a pool of blood. Lying dead in the road. And her mother behind the wheel, driving the car that had struck her. There were no words to describe it.

Maybe Nic wasn’t her mother. But they were bound together by their guilt, the bow and stern of a sinking ship.

She let Annie recede back into her place of hiding. Hair flying. Smile pulled clear across her face.

She reached in the back for her duffel, then made her way up the steps to the front door.

Inside, the air smelled stagnant as it had before. Nic walked to the reception desk, and set her mother’s key down on the lace runner which lay unevenly across the counter. There were small bowls with soft mints, toothpicks, business cards, a guest register where people could write things about their stay before leaving. And a silver bell, which Nic rang.

Footsteps, creaking wood, a door closing. Booth emerged from his apartment in the back, startled.