“Jesus.” Val throws her arm around my shoulders. “The beach in LA never looks like that,” she whispers, like she’s letting me in on some kind of secret. “We have fucking amazing sunsets, but we don’t get that kind of blue.”

“It’s incredible,” I say. You’d think I’d remember a view like this.

But then, you’d think I’d remember a lot of things.

We’ve almost made it to the front porch when a man steps out from a cluster of trees next to the farmhouse. He’s older, with sandy-blond hair and a weathered face, and he’s carrying a giant pair of hedge clippers. Jude raises his arm in a friendly wave. “Hey! George!” he shouts. “Good to see you, man!”

So this is the infamous Whisper Cove caretaker. The one with a fondness for weed and a reputation for looking the other way.

George gives Jude a dismissive scowl, then lifts his clippers to lop off a low-hanging branch. “Still can’t believe they let you back in here,” he mumbles. He shakes his head and bends to pick up the clippings at his feet. When he straightens back up, his eyes lock on mine, just for a second. There’s something about the way he looks at me that makes my arms break out in goose bumps. Maybe it’s the way I feel his eyes moving over my body—or maybe it’s the giant clippers in his hand—but I’m instantly uneasy, and I’m relieved when he disappears into the trees again.

“He loves me,” Jude assures us with a grin. “I promise.” And I tell myself that I just imagined that weird feeling. That being here has my mind playing tricks on me. I shake it off and tell myself to focus on more important things. Like how I’m about to be face-to-face with Willa Culver.

The farmhouse is painted bright yellow, and it seems to spread out forever with no clear plan, the way houses do when they’ve been added on to and then added on to again. We all gather up on the big front porch, since that’s where the welcome meeting is supposed to be.

A bunch of the others are already there. It’s crowded, so I perch on the railing between Lex and Val. I run my hand over the worn wood and think about how my mother probably touched it. I already feel closer to her here than I ever have in our apartment back home. Dad erased all trace of her there years ago, but here it’s easy to picture her strolling across the lawn. Or sitting in the shade of one of those big trees, reading a script.