When I arrived at the house that night, headlights making a wide path of light across the dark lawn, I saw that the kitchen light was on, and had a flash of what I would find inside. Cole and Lucas at the kitchen table, drinking, waiting. And there they were, exactly as I’d envisioned it. Cole did all the talking, not asking where I’d been, or why I’d gone, but politely, coldly reminding me that the car wasn’t mine to take. What if they’d needed it? What if there’d been an emergency?

“Don’t do it again,” Cole said.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I said. But they ignored me, walked into the living room. I followed, watching in baffled silence as they climbed the stairs. I ran up behind them.

We all looked through the open door to Baby B’s room, where Cole’s duffel bag sat empty on the rug. I went into the room, opened the drawers, saw his clothes folded inside. In the closet, his shirts were hanging. Stacked on the dresser, his creased newspaper, his notebook with the torn pages, where I’d first seen his scribbled notes, the words She Is Alive traced and traced until they were darker than all the other writing.

“You’re not welcome here,” I said.

“I invited him,” Lucas said. They were the first words he’d spoken to me since he’d run away.

“I’m uninviting him,” I said.

“Too late,” Lucas said. I didn’t know if he meant the hour—nearing eleven—or if he meant something more permanent.

“What will you do?” Cole said to me, smiling. “I wonder. Will you carry my clothes out and throw them into the bay? Will you try to drag me down the stairs? I wouldn’t if I were you, I’m far stronger. Will you call the police? I’d love to see that giant idiot who brought Lucas home trying to figure out whether I’m doing anything illegal or not. Hint? I’m not. No, you won’t call the police. You know better than that. I’m wondering if maybe you aren’t going to do anything.”

His face had arranged itself into an expression of sympathy, but underneath, like some awful palimpsest, was suppressed glee glimmering through, and another layer, too, of smooth cruelty.

What could I do? He was right. George Samson wouldn’t be able to help—Cole wasn’t doing anything wrong on the surface; he was Lucas’s invited guest.

But if he was staying here, then I wasn’t.

I turned my back to them and walked down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out into the night. I left the fucking car. I didn’t need it. I walked along the beach, toward the landing.