But as she stared at the screen, one clue was just too powerful to understand, and it made her stomach hurt even worse than before. The e-mail was to every single person her aunt knew. Jessica's mother's name was just part of a long list at the top of the page. It was as if Aunt Sam couldn't quite strike her from her life, but didn't care enough to write her something personal.

Closing her eyes, Jessica fought back the tears. They were coming hard and fast—not because she thought her aunt didn't care, but because she thought maybe her aunt cared too much. The hurt had been too bad for her to ignore. Jessica knew, because she had felt it too.

Glancing over at her mother, still admiring the woman's guitar, Jessica knew that her mother had been wrong about one thing. Sometimes the music did leave. Maybe it still lived somewhere, locked deep inside, but what did that matter, if you couldn't hear it play?

Jessica looked up, above her mother's head, out the open door of the shop. She looked past the inn, where the ceili was under way. Past the cliffs of Cape Hawk, up into the bright summer blue sky. She wished she could send a song through the air. Notes of music that had wings, just like tiny birds, flying south over the earth, asking Aunt Sam to come back to her family.

For the next two and a half days, Lily's life ceased to be her own. She yearned to be with Liam and Rose, but settled for the crackling, fuzzy connection of cell phone calls. Rose described the big house and wide blue bay, the excitement of something happening along the shore—lots more fish than usual, making Liam think it had something to do with why Nanny had come so far south.

Her old beach friends, Tara O'Toole and Bay McCabe, rode their bikes up the hill, leaned them against the old stone wall of the road's turnaround, running into the yard.

“You're back!” Bay cried. “It's true, it's true. . . .”

“Oh my God,” Tara said, holding her, rocking her childhood friend back and forth, as if she needed to hold her to know she was really here. Lily held on tight, taking her friends' love right into her bones.

There were so many questions, so much catching up to do. It wasn't just that a few years had passed—Lily's life had changed entirely. She was Lily now, not Mara. The women had been children together, and now they had children of their own. The subject of Rose shimmered in Lily's mind and heart as she listened to Bay and Tara talk about their own kids.

“Maybe you underestimate what it was like when you disappeared,” Bay said. She pointed at the yellow boots and watering can in the corner of Maeve's kitchen. “Those were on every news show in the state. You seemed to disappear into thin air.”