The phone started ringing again. Cricket. Kate was so angry and full of grief at that moment that, without thinking, she hauled back and threw the ringing phone into the lake, where it landed somewhere near the ghost ladies with a soft plop.

She stood there, stunned. She couldn’t believe she just did that.

She ran her hands through her hair, pushing it out of her eyes. They were going to have to go back to Atlanta. She knew that. That was their home. And she was going to have to face Cricket. But she was not going to be in any commercials. She was not going to support Cricket’s burgeoning political career. Cricket had spent so much time behind the scenes in politics that it had never occurred to Kate that she would ever step in front of the camera, though it made perfect sense. Kate didn’t know why she was so surprised. She had money, looked great on TV, came across as sympathetic but had firm opinions, and she had hair that didn’t move. She had wanted Matt to go into politics, but now that he was gone, Kate figured Cricket had decided she was just going to have to do it herself. Matt had told Kate once that Cricket had made him run for class president and major in political science because she’d been prepping him for something big. He’d said it in an I showed her, didn’t I? kind of way, something that always made Kate think that his life with her was just a way of getting back at his mother.

But Kate was tired of sacrificing her happiness for someone else’s dreams. She’d done it for her mother when she was a teenager, and she’d done it for Matt. She’d done it all willingly, but never again. For the past year, she’d been scared that she couldn’t actually live her own life, that she was someone who was inherently incapable of it. She was scared of being a bad parent. Scared of being alone. Scared to grieve. Not anymore.

This, she thought, was where her real life was going to start. She didn’t know where it was going, but it was going to start here, where she used to know herself so well, where no one else’s rules made sense but her own.

She looked at the water and sighed.

Apparently, her new life was going to start without a phone.

Chapter 7

7

The next morning, Devin woke up early. She didn’t know where she was, and she sat up quickly. But then it came to her. The cabin. Lost Lake. Her eyes went slowly around the room. It reminded her of a hut, the kind a banished princess would live in, hiding from a wicked witch. She liked the thought of being banished. That way, she’d never have to go back. The bed was old and white, with a scene from the lake painted on it. The dresser was fat and round and had glass knobs that looked like cloudy diamonds. The wallpaper was peeling, and she got a splinter in her foot from the uneven floorboards last night, but all in all she couldn’t have dreamed of any place better.