He knew that other things were possible as well. Nanny was getting older. Her immune system could have become compromised, living so far from her native arctic waters. She could have picked up a parasite. Her normal food source, capelin, was unavailable. The boat traffic in Long Island Sound was very busy, especially in near-shore areas. Perhaps she had been injured by a propeller. Her journey south from Nova Scotia, seeming to follow Rose along the way, had been an extraordinary one.

Liam prayed that Patrick was wrong.

He couldn't bear to think of the proud white whale in captivity—he hoped that Patrick was mistaken, that the Lafarge brothers had nothing to do with Nanny's disappearance. Liam had alerted John Stanley and Peter Wayland, the Fish and Wildlife officer, and by now he was sure that the Coast Guard and every oceanographic research vessel in the area were on the lookout for the Mar IV.

In spite of Patrick's suspicions, Liam continued to look out. Just like his ancestors, who had stood in the crow's nest of the Pinnacle, watching for whale spouts so they might kill the whales for profit, Liam stood on the rocks, scanning for Nanny, so he and his beloved Lily and Rose might continue their summer of faith. That's what it had been, he realized.

He knew that Ghost Hills—as amazing and unbelievable as they were—provided a scientific explanation for why Nanny had come south from Cape Hawk. Liam knew what his oceanographer colleagues would say. But deep down, he knew differently. Nanny had come to Connecticut out of love. Whales are mammals, and life is full of mystery. Not everything could be explained by logic and science. There had been nothing logical about Nanny's behavior this summer.

But looking down at Lily and Rose, Liam realized that there had been nothing logical about his, either. He had spent most of his life in a fortress of his own making. In a stone house on a hill, surrounded by boreal forest, surrounded by books and journals instead of people to love. He had lost his arm to the shark that had killed his brother Connor. And he'd spent every year since then trying to make sense of the loss, trying to understand tragedy with his mind.

From the minute Lily and Rose had entered his life, he had loved them. Yet because Lily was so protective and closed off, Liam had kept his feelings mostly to himself. He hadn't wanted to scare Lily or drive her away; he had understood that something terrible had happened to her, and that she needed to stay behind her walls as much as Liam had needed to stay behind his.