“When I went downstairs this morning, one of Sarah’s flowers—a poppy—was sitting right there, in the middle of the dining room table. He put it in a vase and everything. I didn’t even think he knew where we kept those.” She took a breath. “He wanted me to find it, Gav. He wanted me to know he knows.”

“Could he have just found it and thought it was nice?”

“After prom, Silas tried to replant my corsage as a surprise. Trust me, this wasn’t floral appreciation.”

“Do you want me to come get you? I don’t like you feeling unsafe.”

Lily leaned back against the wall.

“I’m fine,” she said, her pulse slowing simply from his voice. “I’m safe. He is probably just passive-aggressively letting me know he knows I did something for Sarah. But I can explain that easily enough. Sean just turned seventeen, you know.”

“Makes the whole thing real on a different level.”

Lily closed her eyes. She had always loved the boathouse. She loved the sounds it made: the slap of water over the rusted boat lift, the creak of the weather vane.

“He couldn’t possibly know about us.”

“No,” Gavin agreed. “Not from a flower.”

Lily could hear Gavin press the receiver into his neck as if pulling her close.

“Fuck, Gav. I really wish I could see you.”

“I wish I could do a lot more than see you.”

Lily leaned back against the wall harder, and then she heard the screen door slam shut and saw Sean shuffling down the porch steps.

“Shit, I have to go. Hold that thought, okay?”

“As if it ever goes away,” he said. “Would be nice to get some work done once in a while.”

“I love you,” she said, before slipping her phone under a half-deflated inner tube and grabbing a bag of birdseed from a shelf just as Sean stepped inside.

“There you are!”

“Where else would I be?” Sean asked groggily as he walked into the boathouse. He had on his swim shorts and held a book under his arm.

“Where is your father?”

Sean shrugged as he continued past her to the dock.

“Well, don’t mind me,” she said to his back. “Just feeding the birds.”

PEYOTE

TO HER CREDIT, CAL didn’t say a single word until the elevator doors closed.

“I have been trying to be nice to you,” she said, jamming the emergency brake and bringing the whole thing to a screaming halt. “I mean, honestly—maybe for the first time ever—I am genuinely trying to be nice. Not because I need you for something, but because for some fucknut reason, I actually kind of like you. And you, you fucking asshole—”

She slammed her fist into the wall with the word.

“Cal, I—”

“Do you think you’re the only one who suffers? It’s Hell for all of us, not just you.”