She’d come to the island filled with determination to make some decisions about her future. After the first agonizing Christmas without her family, she’d returned to work as a second grade teacher, thinking that getting back to her routine would help to jumpstart her life. It hadn’t taken long to realize being around other children close in age to the two she’d lost was not at all the catharsis she’d hoped it would be.

Rather, it was sweet torture to look at the children in her classroom and be reminded day in and day out that her own beautiful children were gone forever. So she had soldiered through to the end of the school year and stood now at a crossroads with big decisions to make. She’d already told her school she wouldn’t be back next year. The principal had urged her to take the summer, to think it over, to give herself some more time.

But she’d seen no point in holding up a job that someone else could do much better than she could. She saw no point in returning year after year to teach children the same age her son had been when his life came to an abrupt end. While she’d always loved the job and the age group she taught, it just wasn’t possible to do it anymore. So she’d endured the party her concerned colleagues had given to wish her well and emptied her classroom for the last time.

She would’ve left the next day for the island—the one place where she could find the peaceful calm she needed more than anything else at the moment. However, a court date for the drunk driver who’d hit them had kept her in Wellesley until late July, only to have the proceeding postponed until the fifth of September at the last minute.

Her parents had fretted about her being alone on the island for the month of August, but she’d assured them she and Buddy would be just fine and had promised daily phone calls to check in with them. The promise had pacified them, and she’d sent them on their way to the reunion of her father’s family they’d looked forward to in Wisconsin. They were heading to California from there, completing a lifelong goal to drive cross-country. After the long dark winter that followed the accident, it was time for all of them to get back to living again.