I thought she was just basking in the warmth of the fire and in the glow of her success. She’d worked hard for it. I had no idea, no idea at all, that she was watching two trails diverge in the woods and thinking that she was on the wrong one.

“I’m really proud of you,” I said.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

You were running so fast in your life that you never saw that Karly wanted to slow things down.

Scotty was right. Karly had told me how she was feeling that day in everything but words. I never heard her.

“I wondered who was out here,” Susannah Chance said from the doorway of the dollhouse. “I thought it might be you.”

Karly’s mother wore a satin robe tied at the waist over her nightgown, and I could have sworn she’d put on makeup to go check on an intruder. She came inside the cottage and went and made herself a cup of coffee at the Keurig machine on the counter. When that was done, she took the mug into her hands and sat down on the sofa across from me.

Physically, she looked the way Karly would have looked in another twenty-five years, although Susannah was still trying hard to look like Karly’s older sister. She’d groomed her only child to be a carbon copy of herself, with the same ambition, same charm, same need for success. Karly had spent her twenties following that blueprint under Susannah’s watchful eye.

“How are you, Dylan?” she asked.

“I’m lost.”

“Yes, of course. Tom and I are devastated. I wake up each day, and I can’t believe it.”

“I’m sorry.”

Susannah sipped her coffee. The steam rose in front of her face. She’d said she was devastated at the loss of her daughter, and I’m sure she was, but Susannah Chance didn’t show emotions easily. Her husband was the poet, the one who wore his heart on his sleeve.

“You can stay here tonight if you like,” she added.

“Thanks. That’s nice of you. But I just needed to feel her again. That’s why I came.”

Susannah looked around at the dollhouse and gave me a numb smile. Maybe loss always brings self-reflection. “I don’t know if this is the right place to do that. I think Karly felt like a doll herself when she was here. Artificial. Unreal. A plaything. That’s my fault. The truth is, she was never really happy until she met you, Dylan. And if you sometimes felt that I didn’t like you, maybe that was the reason.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing at all.