She spent the next few days biking around the island and walking the empty beaches. She wasn’t sure exactly when it had happened, but through her pain and her anger, she’d somehow figured out how she intended to shape her future.

No more of the lobbying she detested. She was going to listen to her heart and once again work one-on-one with kids. But that couldn’t be all. Her conscience dictated that she keep using her secondhand fame to advocate on a larger scale. This time she intended to do that through something that truly fulfilled her—through her writing.

When her brutally honest newspaperman father read the manuscript and called her, he confirmed what she already knew. “Luce, you’re a real writer.”

She was going to write her own book, not about herself or her family, but about real kids in peril. It wouldn’t be some dry, academic tome, but a page-turner full of personal stories from kids, from counselors, all with the goal of shining a brighter spotlight on the welfare of the most vulnerable. Her name on the spine would guarantee plenty of publicity. That meant thousands of people—maybe hundreds of thousands—who knew nothing about disadvantaged kids would gain real insight into the issues they faced.

But having a clearer direction didn’t bring her the peace she craved. How could she have let herself fall in love with him? A bitter knot burned so fiercely in the center of her chest that she sometimes felt as though she’d burst into flames.

With the manuscript mailed off and October fast approaching, she called her mother’s press secretary, who hooked her up with a reporter from the Washington Post. On the next-to-last day of September, Lucy sat in the sunroom, her phone pressed to her ear, and gave the interview she’d been avoiding.

It was humiliating … I panicked … Ted is one of the finest men I’ve ever met … spent the last few months working on my father’s book and trying to get my bearings back … going to be writing my own book … advocate for kids who have no voice …

She didn’t mention Panda.

After the interview, she called Ted and had the conversation she couldn’t have had with him before. Then she began to pack.

Bree had been to her old vacation house several times since Lucy had moved back in, and she came over the day after the interview to help her close up. In only a few months, she, Toby, and Mike had become woven into the fabric of Lucy’s life, and she knew she’d miss them. But as close as she felt to Bree, Lucy couldn’t talk to her about Panda, couldn’t talk to anybody, not even Meg.