After Tuck left, the weeks were lonely. Jim Cardoza would often invite us over for dinner, and when Lucas refused to go, Jim would show up at our door with small meals. On Christmas, Eddie and Kim knocked on the door early, ridiculous Santa hats on their heads and their arms full of packages. The gifts were nothing we wanted—a word search book, a shot glass from Jack’s—but I held them, feeling like I was holding treasure.

“I don’t even know what to say,” I told them.

“We just wanted you to know—you’ve got a lot of friends. You’ve got us,” Kim said. The look she gave me was uncharacteristically fierce. She didn’t laugh even a little. I thought maybe this was her way of forgiving me, and I felt something give way in my chest, something hard and icy slipping into liquid. Warm and warmer, until it was all fiery gratitude and love for both of them.

I had friends. I felt it all the time now—a sense of community. I had Jim Cardoza, and Elijah West, and Sebastian and Gordon, and in the spring, I would have the information booth again, all the tourists with their questions. I had all this love suddenly—for the islanders, the tourists, for Lucas. Home began to mean something new.

After Christmas I made a decision. Although it scared me, I knew I had no choice. I needed a life of my own, a place that was mine to fill up. A place where I would make my own memories as pristine as a newborn’s.

I found the folder of college applications, half-filled-out, and put them all in the fireplace one by one. That was a leftover dream from when I was seventeen, and I wanted to grow up, grow older, make a new dream. Whatever life had in store for me, it was here on the island—that seemed suddenly clear to me. But that didn’t mean I was a prisoner to my mother’s ghost, her dresses in the closet, the furniture she’d chosen. That didn’t mean I was a prisoner to Lucas or the house.

The week between Christmas and New Year’s was surprisingly warm. I went to the landing. Clint was practicing bagpipes again, and I thought, as I always did, of each note as a seagull, soaring out over the water. Behind the post office, I watched the postmaster, facing the harbor and holding aloft his bagpipes, with all the strange arms and necks and valves, that big heart of an instrument.

A little sign was hanging on the shingled wall just to the side of the post office’s back door. This was what I’d come for. I reached up and took it down, held the paper in my hand. For rent. One bedroom. Includes heat.