“Hey,” he says. His voice is so gentle in my ear. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I pull away and look around. The sky has the look of early morning. I hear the low rumble of distant thunder. “What time is it?” I ask.

“Five o’clock,” he says. But it was only two when I woke up. And I’m wondering why Cole didn’t find me. Cole always finds me. Lex’s eyes look worried. He’s smoothing the damp hair away from my face. “You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, Av, if you were in trouble?”

“Yeah,” I promise. “Of course I would.” But I wonder how I’d know if I were really in trouble.

Would I even be able to tell?

“Come on,” he says, and we gather up our things to dash across the field. The rain starts again just as we hit the front steps of the cabin. I hear the first cold, wet drops rattle on the roof. Lex tells me to get a few hours of sleep before breakfast, and I promise him that I will. But when I turn to head inside, I freeze. A bundle of lavender dangles from the doorknob. It’s tied with twine, and the smell of it burrows its way inside my brain. I take it with shaking fingers and fling it into the rain. Then I creep inside.

I can’t sleep, though. No matter what I promised Lex. I keep hearing those voices from the past.

My mother’s. I want everything out in the open.

And Cole’s. Look at the stars!

I pull out my mother’s notebook again. I settle on the floor in front of my bunk and study it by cell phone light. There has to be something else in here about Brody Culver. I need another clue. Some proof. Something that will help me understand who my mother really was. And who she was becoming that summer at Whisper Cove.

But I don’t find anything new. At least, not until I turn the notebook over. The back corner is water-stained and splotchy. But I can just barely make out something written in the top right corner. #2, it says. And at first I can’t figure out what that could mean. Then I remember that photo Glory gave me. The one of my mother working at the table in the library.

I dig the picture out of my backpack to stare at it. And I was right. There are two notebooks lying open beside her laptop. I squint at the image, but it’s too small and too fuzzy. I can’t read any of the writing.