This voice, the one she was using on the phone, was a very different voice than the one she’d just used for Declan Lynch. She’d used her outside, professional voice to talk to the phone, her inside, real voice to talk to Declan Lynch. Hennessy and her girls were the only ones who used to get the second one. They’d been the only ones who were important.

Hennessy’s cheeks felt hot.

“Hello?” Jordan said. Then, to Declan, “No, a crank caller, I guess. Or a bad connection. One doesn’t like to assume malice.”

“Safer to assume,” Declan said drily, and Jordan’s laugh faded as she pulled the phone away from her head.

Hennessy hung up.

She sat back on the mattress.

She let herself think it. This is what she’s always wanted.

It wasn’t that Hennessy had wanted Jordan to be unhappy in her absence. After all, Hennessy was the one who’d insisted Jordan go with Declan in the first place—right? Her memories were muddy. She could hear a little voice suggesting Jordan had actually come up with the idea, but carefully worded it so Hennessy would think it was hers. Was that true?

She thought about going upstairs to find Ronan. He would remember. He was there that night.

But finding Ronan meant finding Bryde, too, because they were together in the bunk bedroom, and also because the two of them were inseparable. And Bryde would just try to spin her current misery into a lesson. Hennessy didn’t think she could take any more lessons.

The basement was cold. She pulled up the sheet around her to cover her shoulders and, just like that, was transported to her memory in Jay’s studio. Little ghost.

What if Jordan stopped loving her? What if she’d never loved her, only needed her? What if Hennessy had lost the only real thing in her life by running off to chase dreams with Bryde and Ronan Lynch?

What was she doing here?

They weren’t a company of three dreamers. Bryde and Ronan were one thing. Hennessy was something else.

Hennessy was so tired of being alone.

She was so tired.

She turned the phone over in her hands. Even the phone was a reminder of how little she belonged here. If not for Ronan, it wouldn’t be a phone in her hands, it would be the Lace, just like at Rhiannon Martin’s farm. Angrily, she tapped through the options, looking to see what her subconscious and Ronan’s subconscious had dreamt into it. Contact numbers. Speakerphone. Text messaging.

Timer.

Before Ronan and Bryde, Hennessy had always set a timer before she fell asleep. Twenty minutes. That was the longest she could sleep before starting to dream. Eventually she had to set the timer while she was awake, too, because it turned out that sleeping without dreaming eventually left one prone to drifting off even while painting or driving.