Leah was the only person waiting there that afternoon, anxious and sweating in her weather-inappropriate black jeans. The glaring blue of the lake surrounded her on all sides. A rocky mountain reared out of the water to the north, looking almost muscular as the sun rippled over its curves and planes. Behind it, out of sight, lay the resort. Waiting to reveal itself to those who were privileged enough to be staying there.

Would her sister come on the ferry to meet her? Leah had told Charlotte what time she expected to arrive, but Charlotte had been typically vague about her intentions. Since landing, Leah had been on tenterhooks. Might she meet her at the airport? she’d wondered first. No, but there had been a man in mirrored sunglasses holding a sign with Leah’s name on it, who’d whisked her into a plush, air-conditioned car and driven her to the small town of Malcesine, the last stop in reality before Il Mandarino.

Stepping out into blinding sunlight, Leah had looked around for Charlotte again before assuming she should head to the dock and hope for a ferry. It was unsettling, not knowing at what point she would clap eyes on her sister after two years apart. It wouldn’t have occurred to Charlotte that Leah might be nervous, that most people—especially Leah—liked to have schedules and plans. “Charlottetime,” their dad used to call it, laughing fondly at his eldest daughter’s ability to be hours late and not even appear to realize. Since moving to Italy and immersing herself in Il Mandarino, Charlotte seemed to exist even more in her own unfathomable world.

At least, she had when Leah had last visited. To her shame, she didn’t know who her sister might be now. How grief might have changed her. Leah reminded herself she was here to build bridges, to assess with her own eyes whether Charlotte was “coping fine,” as her strange, brief emails always claimed she was.

Her gaze was tugged toward the center of the lake, where the blue was darker and denser, where the water seemed to swallow the sunlight rather than bounce it into her eyes. Something dragged at her stomach, like a weight trying to pull her in. She gripped the golden railings of the dock but they were scalding hot and she jolted back. At that moment, she spotted the ferry cutting a frothy path toward her, an orange and gold Il Mandarino flag streaming from its top deck.

At the front stood a familiar figure, with long dark hair bannering in the breeze. Not Charlotte, as Leah misidentified her for a moment, but her daughter Olivia, Leah’s niece.

Leah’s other niece, as she couldn’t help thinking of her now.