“I wasn’t allowed to make calls at the academy. I wasn’t allowed to email without being monitored, and I didn’t want to say anything too personal with someone reading over my shoulder. But I could write letters. I wrote to you for weeks, and when you didn’t respond, I thought—”

“I didn’t get your letters,” Jack stammered, her thoughts racing. Had her mother hidden them? It seemed impossible. Her mother was rarely home. “I thought you had forgotten me, or you’d gone running back to Belle and never bothered to tell me.”

“I couldn’t go back to her. I can never go back to her.”

“But you loved her so much. You two were obsessed with each other.”

“Obsession isn’t healthy, Jack. And in the months before I left town, Belle started to rant about my stepmother. She said she was going to come up with a plan, and then our problem would disappear.”

“Did she give you any details?” Jack swallowed. “Did she say—”

“I don’t think she was actually going to do anything. I think she was just trying to make me feel better, but it scared me to hear her talk like that. It made me think I didn’t know her. We were so young when we fell for each other. We thought we were going to be together forever, but how can you be with someone when you don’t really know them? How can you love them when they haven’t become who they’re going to be? People grow apart. My parents did, even before…”

Jack sucked in a breath. His father’s file was in her backpack. She could take it out and show him what she’d discovered. But clearly, Raven knew that his parents had been having problems, and if Jack was honest with herself, she’d known it too.

“Do you remember how we met?” she asked, glancing out the window. “I snuck into your orchard to steal apples for me and Flynn. My backpack was overflowing by the time I realized there was a boy hiding in the branches.”

It had been after twilight. The trees looked black against the cerulean sky. Jack had made a point to stick to the edge of the orchard, far from the great stone house that rose up like a castle. Her stomach had growled as she plucked her first apple from the ground. She’d wanted to sit there and feast for hours.

Instead, she unzipped her backpack, the same one she wore now, and began sliding apples inside. When the voice rang out, it came from above her. She thought, for a moment, that she’d been caught by God. How terrible must her luck have been, to sneak into an orchard one time, only to be caught by the Almighty himself. That sort of thing would only happen to Jack.