“But your aunt Clare was your mom’s closest friend—” Although Charlie’s voice tailed off, the implication of her words still hung in the air. Why would they spend the summer with their mother’s closest friend when their mother was no longer with them?

“Not just my mom’s. She’s a family friend. Dad adores her, too. We all do.” She didn’t mention Aiden. She had to stop thinking about Aiden. He hadn’t said those words since. The messages they’d exchanged had been factual. Made the football team. Went sailing with Dad. Love could die. People could die. “Molly would be gutted if we didn’t go. We’ve been trying to keep everything the same.”

Surely if there was a question of them not going, her father would have mentioned it?

An image of the lake floated into her mind. It was so peaceful there, the air fresh and clean. There was something about the awe-inspiring scenery that made problems shrink. Right now she badly needed hers to shrink. She was tired of being trapped in a place filled with memories of her mother. True, Lake Lodge was also somewhere she associated with her mother, but not in the same way as home. The house belonged to Aunt Clare and her family, and was filled with their family treasures and personal items. Izzy wouldn’t be confronted by a large photograph of her mother when she came down to breakfast. Even the memories would be different. She remembered her mother lying on a sunlounger, a book open next to her, one knee bent as she talked to Clare. Her mother, curled up in the library while rain thundered against the windows and turned the waters of the lake choppy. Her mother had been a different person on those vacations, at least in the first few days. After that she’d become restless, longing to return to the fast lane.

Once, she’d taken Izzy’s hand and pulled her toward the lawn that stretched all the way to the lakeside. “Listen,” she’d said. “What do you hear? Nothing, right?”

Izzy had dutifully listened. “I hear birds? And the water.” Faint splashes. The ripple of tiny waves as they hit the shoreline. They were the most relaxing sounds she’d ever heard. Izzy would have lived there if she could, but apparently her mother didn’t agree.

“Exactly. Birds and water. Don’t you miss the sounds of the city?”