“Cole was your shadow, right from the start.” Willa’s fingers are moving through my hair, but for a moment I imagine they belong to my mother. That we’re sharing this memory together. Our couch. Our house. And she’s made me tea. “From the very first day you met,” Willa says, “you were two peas in a pod.” She sighs. “It was a dream come true for me and Nicole, the two of us finding out we were pregnant at the very same time.” She pauses. Takes another sip from her mug. “But we were so far apart during those early years, so when the opportunity came for her to come up and spend that summer at Whisper Cove, I knew I wanted her to bring you along.”

Another video has started to play. Cole and I are chasing seagulls on the beach. We run toward a huge flock of them, waving our arms and laughing, and the birds all take to the sky at once. The screen is filled with white. I sit up to stare at the two of us. We both look so happy.

“You were quite a pair,” Willa says. “Of course, you were both with Glory most of that summer. I was busy trying to get the theatre in the black. Making fundraising phone calls all day, every day. Filling out grant applications. Traveling back and forth to the city for meetings with donors. And Nicole was in rehearsal day and night.” She smiles again, but it’s a different kind of smile this time. The kind that comes with a raised eyebrow. “It doesn’t surprise me a bit that you and Cole still share that special connection. I’m glad you found your way back to each other.” She looks toward the picture on the piano. “There are people we’re meant to walk through life with, Avril. If we’re lucky, we find them. If we’re really lucky, we manage to hang on to them.”

And now I’m thinking that maybe I have things wrong. What if I’m getting one memory confused with another? If Cole and I spent those weeks mostly together, then there must have been so many summer nights. How do I know that memory of falling stars isn’t from some other evening? Maybe my memories are bleeding together, the way sidewalk chalk runs and mixes in the rain.

But somehow, even as I think it, I know that’s not true.

Cole Culver was there the night my mother died. I know it now.

I’ve always known it.

Willa takes my mug from the coffee table, even though I’ve barely had a sip. She goes into the kitchen to get us more tea.

I’m looking out the window. It’s getting light outside. I should go, I think. Let Willa get ready to start her day.