“Your mother.”

“Every night before I went to bed.” The same lullaby. A softer, quieter version of The Magic Flute. During the day she would dance through the house, pouring out arias from Tosca or La Traviata, never caring who was listening. But at night, when it was just the two of them, she would sit Emily in a rocking chair by the window, always open so they could see the ever-changing moon, and sing to her about Tamino and his magic flute.

“You can always start again.”

“What?” It was something her grandmother used to say, whenever Emily thought she’d made a mistake, when a picture didn’t appear on the page in the same way she saw it in her mind. How much of what she taught Emily had been learnt from Noah, from all the people she used to know?

“That’s the beauty of tomorrow,” Noah said as he raised his glass in a toast. “I think it’s time for you to move on. Find something new to paint.”

“I’ll try.”

“There’s a line in this story, one I keep going back to, again and again.” He reached out for the book, flipped through the pages until he found the words he was looking for. “Put your hand in the water, and watch all the ripples appear.”

It was a line from when the dragon asked Ophelia to swim in the waters once more, waters he had warmed with his own fiery breath.

“I think she meant it as a message for you.” His hand was on hers now, his eyes filled with tears. “That each ripple should be seen as a possibility, and she wanted you to chase them all.”

“But what if I can’t?”

“Then at least you tried. That’s all any of us can ever do.”

Emily looked out to the lake, to where Noah’s boat was gently pitching on the water. Always water. From the very beginning, she had always taken Emily to the water.

“How long will it take to get to Lugano?”

“It’s not far. But stay here, just for one night, and tomorrow I will take you back to Beth.”

There was a canary-yellow sofa with tassels all around its base. A pale, gray marble bathroom with roses set by the sink. A bed as soft as a dream and a mahogany writing desk positioned by an open window, from which Emily could hear crickets rubbing their legs together in unison, singing their strange dusk chorus.

“I get it,” she whispered to the moon, to all the birds that flew through the darkening sky. “I get it,” she whispered again, taking out a plain white envelope and steeling herself for those sheets of palest blue and what they might contain.

She understood how she had been trapped in the memory of a thirteen-year-old girl. A girl who took flight, like a bird, to try to escape the pain she had witnessed. But now she needed to take a leap of faith, rid herself of the past and set herself free.