Yes, after all those years, Lucas had to find a new job. The Day Estate had been sold, the whole deal somehow shrouded in mystery. Developers, everyone said, whispered it like it was a dirty word. I didn’t know what would happen to that old house, those paths and gardens, the long thin rocks that made the claws of Wolf Island.

I just knew that Lucas was out of a job, and I worried.

But it turned out the change was good for Lucas. He started off doing a bit of landscaping for the aquarium, then cleaning lobster tanks. He did some construction on the new seal tank. He brought fish for the seals when the trainer wasn’t in.

He began to talk again about refinancing, so he could fix up the house. He wanted to add skylights to some of the bedrooms. He wanted to look up at the stars all night. He was suddenly back in the world.

I love him as much as ever, but my heart breaks a little every time I see him. Breaks because we are not the brother and sister we used to be, breaks for the closeness we had that we lost. Perhaps hearts are supposed to break open—like acorns—so that new growth can green its way out. That’s how grown-ups love, I suspect. And that’s what I’m trying to be now—an adult. Someone who makes decisions for herself, even if they’re sometimes mistakes.

I sometimes wonder about the shadow—that skin of despair I brought back with me from Baby B’s grave. I’ve grown accustomed to it, almost grateful for it. I watch the other islanders; they all have shadows of their own. I thought the shadow had something to do with Colin, with my mother and what she may have done to him, something to do with secrets and lies, and the things we bury deep under the earth. But maybe the shadow has more to do with leaving childhood and a child’s simple sense of the world far behind—finally. Maybe the shadow is the grief we feel for the children we used to be, not the children we bury.

Miracle number two is that Emily woke up.

Anthony Coletti’s mother wrote to tell me so. I gathered from her letter that Emily wasn’t quite the person she’d been a year ago. Neither are any of us, I thought, but I knew what she meant. It took her a long time to recover, to relearn what it meant to be human. To walk and talk, to do things like wash dishes and make sandwiches and write letters. By spring she could do all these things.

And then she wanted to talk about Anthony.