“Mom, you’re not listening to me. I’ve been with Ryan all day. He took me out riding, and we went to the festival and spent the whole day together. You’ve got this all wrong. He made it home that night. He didn’t drown.” The words were so ridiculous, Amy could hardly get them out.

“I know this is confusing.”

“Confusing? Why would any of this be confusing? I’m sitting in a haunted lighthouse talking to my mother, who I thought I’d never see or speak to again, and she’s trying to tell me that the guy I met today actually died two months ago, which seems a bit strange seeing as I’m the one who just spent the day with him, and he looked pretty alive to me. And I’m pretty sure he thinks he’s alive too.”

“I’m sure he does, but that’s because he’s fooled himself into remembering a different version of events. Ryan died on that night, Amy—I’m afraid he just doesn’t realize it.”

Amy threw her arms up in the air in frustration. “This is crazy. Will you please just explain what’s going on? Why have you come back? How can I be talking to you right now? And why are you trying to tell me that Ryan is dead even though he’s walking around town and living his life as though everything is normal?”

“Well, that’s the thing—everything’s not normal, is it? Nothing about this town is normal.”

“Mom, I’ve just escaped a hotel full of creepy people who were trying to bust down my door, and now I’m sitting here talking to you. I’m fully aware none of this is normal. But what’s that got to do with Ryan? Or you? What’s any of this got to do with anything ?”

“Stand up, sweetheart—let me show you something.”

Amy stood and followed her mother to the other side of the room, where they stopped by the window and glanced back down the beach.

“Look closely,” her mother said, “tell me what you see.”

Amy ran her eyes along the coastline. Through the wind and rain, she spotted the faint glow of streetlights, the distant outline of buildings as they became briefly illuminated by the beam of the lighthouse.

“I see Seabrook.”

“It may look like Seabrook, but the truth—and this is going to sound a little strange—is that it’s not the real Seabrook.”

“Say that again?”

“The town you’re staring at is a fake. Everything you see out there, from the buildings, to the ocean, to the sky, right down to every single grain of sand on that beach—not one bit of it is real.”

Amy turned away from the view and raised her eyebrows at her mother. “You can’t really be serious.”

“I’m afraid so.”