“Hey,” he says. “Sleep okay?” Like we’re an old married couple meeting at the breakfast table over French toast and the morning paper.

“Not really,” I tell him.

“We need to talk,” he says. My head hurts. The sun is so bright. And I don’t think I’m ready to have another conversation with Cole Culver. Not yet. “I need to show you something. I promise it won’t take long.” He looks at me for a few seconds. “It’s important.”

I think about how he found me last night. How he saved my life, probably. I remember the strength of his grip on my hand. The comfort in that. And the heat.

“Yeah,” I say. “Okay.” I leave my backpack on the porch, and Cole leads me across the grass and down a little hill toward a long, low building. It’s painted bright white, and the words SCENE SHOP have been burned into a board nailed over the door.

George is sitting on an overturned five-gallon bucket out front, smoking a cigarette. “Ya need somethin’?” he asks, and I can feel him looking at me, but I avoid his eyes. I’m relieved when Cole just shakes his head, and we keep moving. I’ve had enough weird moments with George to last me the rest of summer.

We don’t go inside the scene shop. Instead, Coles takes me around toward the back. A few pieces of scenery sit drying in the sun, and a couple of dusty sawhorses rest in the shade of a tree. The plywood silhouette of a skyscraper leans against a light pole. We pick our way between stacks of old lumber and discarded paint cans. “Back here,” he says. “Watch out for nails.”

And that’s when I see the name on the back of the building.

NICOLE KENDRICK

It’s painted in red. Capital letters. Big and bold. There’s a familiar date there, too. The day my mother died.

And beneath that, in cursive brush-stroke script—

What the sea wants, the sea will have.

The words look so jarring against the white boards—like the bloody title credits of a horror movie—that at first I don’t believe I’m really seeing them. I’m frozen for a second. Staring.

I reach out to touch the N in my mother’s name, and the damp grass slips under my feet. My whole world tilts sideways. Suddenly, I’m drowning. Eyes open. Water rushing in over my head. The burn of it in my throat. The weight of it in my stomach. Pulling me down like a stone.

Cole stays close—watching me—but he doesn’t say anything. “What is this?” I manage to ask.