“I walked to town,” I replied, eager to deal with her quickly to avoid becoming emotional. “And I ran into Henry Richmond at the pharmacy. He’s here.”

She entered the living room carrying a basket of laundry. It struck me for possibly the first time ever that my mom actually looked young. Even compared to the other moms in town—moms who had the gray dyed out of their hair, moms who wore yoga tights to the grocery store after their morning kundalini class at the community center—she didn’t look nearly as old and tired of life as I had grown accustomed to thinking of her as being. Perhaps she had a new energy about her because of Glenn. But it was possible she looked different to me now that I was looking at her through the lens of the likelihood that she’d probably outlive me, instead of the other way around. I pushed the thought away.

“Well, hello, Henry. I thought you were back in France at that resort job of yours.”

“I came home for Mr. and Mrs. Portnoy’s funeral,” Henry said, which was only partially true. “Plus, the resort tends to empty out over Easter weekend, so it’s not like I’m missing much.”

Not wanting to waste a single moment of my remaining time, I asked, “Is it okay if I go to the Richmonds’ house for a little while?”

The flash of objection I saw on her face made me feel a pang of guilt. I’d given her every reason to be suspicious of me. Before January, she’d been much more trusting of Henry, too, but I suspect it had unsettled her that he’d been in Michigan with me and Trey at the time of the avalanche, since Henry had graduated the previous June and had no business being on a ski trip with a bunch of eleventh graders.

Sensing her objection, Henry chimed in, “My mom’s home. She’s sorting through all of Olivia’s things to donate to charity.”

As he probably knew it would, this softened Mom’s expression. She asked how Mrs. Richmond was doing, and I told Henry to wait a second while I dashed down the hall to grab a heavier sweater.

My bedroom was startlingly cold, and my eyes instinctively traveled straight to my window, which was cracked open. Before I even saw my phone on my bed, I realized that Trey must have made it back to Willow. Heat crept into my cheeks at the thought of how Henry’s soft lips had felt against my mouth just fifteen minutes earlier. Now that I knew Trey was very close by—he may have even been in my bedroom while I’d been kissing Henry—my betrayal of him felt as bitter as I knew deep down that it was. I had no idea how he’d managed to change his flight or hitch a ride from Green Bay to town, but he’d set my phone on my bed underneath a book, right next to the weekender bag I’d brought home with me. For a moment, I wondered if there was any reason why he’d taken a book off my shelf to cover the phone, or significance to the book he’d chosen (Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier). But then I reasoned he’d probably just placed the book over the phone in case my mother peered into my room and saw the phone there, which would have made her wonder how I could have lost it in plain sight.