She was lucky, said the doctor, who looked young enough to go to school with Jack. One fragmented piece at a time, her family told the story of the night she was lost on Oystertip Island. These broken pieces of information formed a border to a puzzle as her memory filled in the middle details. They told her she had somehow wandered into the marsh, the endless maze of dead-end trails and high grass. The search team had found her curled and shivering on an oyster bed at the edge of the sea. It had been seven in the morning when they finally found her, unconscious with a body temperature of 90.2 degrees. She now understood where the deep cuts and piercing pain on her left side were from—even a thick coat of down was no match for the slicing razors of broken and halved oyster shells.

In the whispered voice of the defeated, Phil told her that when Nick awoke at five in the morning and found her gone, he’d called for help. If he hadn’t called, she would have lain unconscious as the tide, pulled unusually high by the full moon, rolled in at nine forty that morning. She wasn’t angry with Nick for this call. He’d saved her life. It wasn’t his fault. It was hers, only hers.

The police did not understand why she’d wandered into the marsh. They’d come to the hospital asking endless questions about whether she’d taken medication, whether she was drunk. She couldn’t tell them she believed she’d found the moon and was meant to follow it.

She assumed Jack and Molly didn’t know all the details. They somehow believed she’d gone to the house for preservation purposes and become disoriented on the property in the night.

Carol Anne held her hand. She didn’t lecture Amy about searching for change the wrong way; she didn’t give advice or deliver sarcastic comments. She gave only love.

The OWP members came and stood over her also. If she could have moved, if she’d any strength to run, she would have. At least Phil and Carol Anne stared down at her knowing the truth, but these four students stared down at her with undeserved admiration. They believed she and Nick had broken into the house in search of further proof of the home’s historic value, evidence to save it. They thought her courageous and worthy.

Phil left the room when they came. Revvy sat on the green plastic-covered chair next to her bed.

“You know Nick was arrested.”

Norah punched him on the shoulder. “I don’t think she needs to hear all this right now.”

“No, tell me,” Amy said. She needed to know every evil thing her sin had sown.

“Well, we pooled our money for his bail and now he’s kind of disappeared.”