Amy had questions. Lots of questions. But what she struggled with the most wasn’t that she was talking to her dead mother, or that she had overdosed on some pills—it was the revelation about Ryan. To think that the guy she had spent all day with, the guy she had just kissed, had not only died but had also spent the last two months living out some deluded fantasy in a town that wasn’t even real—she just couldn’t believe it. Could he really have been stuck here for that long without realizing something wasn’t right? But as Amy looked around the room, even she had to admit she couldn’t spot anything that looked odd or out of place. From the chill in the air to the uneven streaks of paint on the ceiling, even the smell of kerosene burning beneath the lamp, everything about this illusion seemed utterly real. Even the most minuscule details, like the trails of rain running across the windows, or the way the lighthouse beam shone through them and created flecks of prismatic light in the glass, were astoundingly intricate. It was no wonder Ryan had been fooled.

But what was Amy’s part in all this? She took some pills and blacked out, she got that, but if this illusion was created to deceive Ryan, then what was she doing in here? How exactly did she end up sharing his snow globe with him? That question was put straight to her mother.

“Well, it certainly wasn’t by accident,” she answered. “The truth is that your spirits latched on to each other in a very strong way, and this connection between you is how Ryan was able to draw you in.”

“Wait, are you saying he did this? He brought me in here on purpose?”

“No, at least not on a conscious level. Remember, to him, you were just a girl he found in a bathtub. He hasn’t got a clue where you’re really from.”

Amy replayed that moment in her head when she saw Ryan standing at the doorway . . . the moment she had left the real world behind.

“But we’re complete strangers,” Amy said. “How could there be such a strong connection between us if we hadn’t even met yet, when he didn’t even know who I was?”

“Let’s back up and talk about the reason you came down to Seabrook in the first place.”

Amy raised her eyebrows. “It was for Dad’s work, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but it was actually because of your uncle.”

“Uncle Jack? What’s he got to do with any of this?”

“Quite a lot,” her mother said. “Jack was the one first assigned to Ryan’s case. Ryan’s body was never found, which made him a missing person, but because the local county lacks the resources for that sort of thing, the case fell to the state police to investigate.”