We’d come to the end of the pond, the place where we normally turned right and continued on with our route, across the field, up the stone path by the gazebo. But Tabitha and my mom had turned the other way; Buckets, too, was trying to follow them.

“We’ve started going this way,” she said.

“What? Since when?”

“Mmm,” my mom said, like that was an answer to my question. “There’s a spot down here in the creek where the water gets deep enough to swim. Are you coming?”

It was strange to be walking a different way. It reminded me of what Audrey and Phoebe had been saying about the Lily Pad: how strange it was to discover new pockets of your own hometown. We crossed on the back side of the dorms, passed an old greenhouse that seemed to have been abandoned, joined up with a path that had been worn by other walkers.

We came to a spot with a deep swimming hole and unclipped the dogs. My mom found a stick on the bank, and she tossed it in, and the dogs leaped in after it. They swam in happy circles like fat black seals, both their mouths chomped around one stick.

“I didn’t even know this was here,” I said.

“I know,” my mom said. “Believe me, I was shocked, too. We started going this way because of construction originally, but then it turned out there was this whole part of the campus I hadn’t even seen.”

The dogs swam to the far side of the bank. Tabitha stole the stick from Buckets, who barked at her.

“What a jerk,” I said.

“They have such a funny dynamic,” my mom said. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe they have the same mom.”

“Do you worry they’re going to get stuck over there?” I said.

“Not really. They’re too desperate for biscuits.”

Tabitha left the stick and sniffed around the far edge of the embankment; Buckets, having reclaimed his stick, set about swallowing pieces of it. I wished, not for the first or last time in my life, that I could trade places with the dogs. I would eat a million sticks if it meant I didn’t have to return to Lovesick Falls.

“Mom?”

“Yes, baby.”

“Ros says they’re not coming home.”

She turned to look at me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean they’re not coming home. They met somebody up there, and they want to stay. They’re not coming back,” I said.

“Well, that’s never going to happen,” my mom said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“What do you mean, what do I mean? Ros is seventeen years old, Celia. They live here. If you think for one second Fiona Brinkman is going to let her kid skip town, you’ve got another think coming.”