I was also glad to return to Carson Cove because I wanted to see Tuck again, his bright smile that had nothing to do with what was happening at home.

I wanted to give myself a few days, a chance to catch my breath before I risked another panic attack in Carson Cove, so in the meantime I concentrated on the third change. In addition to the lock and my sessions with Dr. Brent, I rented a safety-deposit box at the Island Bank. I planned to systematically go through the various files in the house and make sure the important papers—the deed to the house, the copies of our parents’ wills—were locked up where Cole couldn’t find them.

I hadn’t paid attention to these things before. The house was paid off. Once a year, a tax bill appeared, and we paid it. When the electric bill came, we wrote a check for that. I deposited my paycheck and Lucas’s paycheck into our checking account at the island bank every two weeks. There was usually enough to pay our water and electricity, to buy groceries. When something came up, we went to our savings account—which our mother had left for us when she died. It was slowly getting smaller, but I had always assumed it would last until—until it ran out, and then we would figure something else out.

It was all stunningly simple. Bills came and we paid. Now things felt more complicated. I was aware suddenly of all we had to lose.

I started in my mother’s room, looked once again in the drawers of her bureau. I went into the closet, where a few of her dresses were still hanging. The smell of sandalwood was still there, faintly, in the folds of her clothes, in a few sweaters still folded on the high shelf. I ran my hands over the dresses, felt their ghostly flutter. I put my hands into her pockets, but there was nothing there.

In the upstairs hallway, I stood for a moment smelling the house’s familiar scent: salt, dampness, bread, coffee. Cole and Lucas were out, and the house was quiet.

I pulled the attic ladder down silently and climbed through its trapdoor onto the dusty plywood floor.

“Hello?” I said, although I knew no one was there.

Then something moved in the corner, large and dark, and I caught my breath. For a moment I felt trapped, in danger. My nightmares. But it was my own reflection I’d seen moving in the old walnut-framed mirror my mother had brought back from her grandmother’s funeral a long time ago. The glass, now under a thick layer of dust, had always been strange to look into—a kind of wavy, distorted reflection. I didn’t know why she’d wanted it.