“I’m sorry,” she says, “if I scared you.” I don’t know which one of us she’s talking to. Both of us, I guess. Her eyes look so different tonight.

“We all get lost sometimes,” I say. But all Willa can do is stare at her shaking hands.

“I’ll take her home,” Cole tells me. He jerks his chin toward the leather sofa in the corner. “Sleep here tonight, okay?” He glances toward the window. “Don’t go back out there.”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “Okay.” I’m trying to come up with something else to say, but I can’t.

“I’m coming back,” he promises, and I can only nod. He starts toward the doorway with Willa, and suddenly more words come to me. “Cole.” He turns back to look at me, and there’s something unreadable in his gray-fog eyes. “Be careful.”

When they’re gone, I look around the library. I’m thinking of that picture Glory gave me of my mother. Her bent over the laptop. Notebooks spread out beside her. Two notebooks. Eyes on fire. I can almost see myself playing hide-and-seek while she works. My little dark-haired playmate concealed behind the long drapes.

I curl up on the comfortable leather sofa. It’s soft. Well-worn. And I wonder if my mother ever sat here. I lean my head against the arm and try to feel her, but I don’t close my eyes. I’m staring out the window into the thick fog. And I know there’s probably nothing there. But I keep seeing shapes. And faces.

Hands pressed against the glass.

I get up and go to untie the golden cords holding the curtains back. I pull them closed before I head back to the sofa.

It’s been such a long, strange night. First the wine with Willa. Then waking up to Cole playing the piano. The fight about his dad. Being alone in the fog. Then not alone on the beach. That conversation with George.

And now Willa. Sleepwalking.

I’m exhausted, but I don’t close my eyes.

Not until later, when Cole slips back into the library. He puts his arms around me. Pulls me against his chest. I feel his beating heart. So I know he’s alive.

Real.

“Has she always done that?” I ask him. “Your mom?”

“The sleepwalking?” I nod. “No. I don’t think so. I think it started . . .” He hesitates.

“After my mom died?”

“Yeah,” Cole says. “That’s what my dad says.”

It’s weird to think that I’m not the only one who was forever changed by my mother’s death. There are so many other people who live with that hole. Just like I always have.

It makes me sad to know that, but somehow it also makes me feel less lonely.