“So you hurt yourself instead?”

“It was my fault,” I say. “All of it.”

“You were a kid.” She rests her head on my shoulder. “You were a scared kid. You weren’t in it to hurt anyone. I could have found a way to help you.” She has that same perfume on. The one I remember. Like flowers pressed in an old book. “Rosemary was so full of herself. I’m sure I had some kind of leverage. You could have stayed.”

“How did you find me?” I ask, changing the subject. I don’t want to think about all the things that would be different if I’d stayed. It’s too hard to pick apart what I might have gained from what I would have lost.

“After I found the envelope, I figured you were already gone. But I was reading your letters last night. You wrote about how you could always see the lake in your mind, and then I knew I’d find you at our campsite.”

Max screws up his face in another kitten yawn and we both get really quiet until he settles back in.

“You talked to me, when I found you, remember?” Carly says.

“No.” I try to search my brain to see what I can recall about being at the campground. It’s not much.

“You kept saying, ‘Carly, don’t leave me here,’ even after I already had you in my car.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“That’s what friends do.”

The ocean in my chest feels like it will spill out around us. After all this time, she’s still my friend.

“How is Adam?” I ask.

“He moved to Boston last year. He got a job there. He’s seeing someone. I think he’s good.” Carly says it carefully, like it might be hard for me to hear, but it’s a relief to know that I didn’t break him. “He was so sad when you left, but I think, overall, you fixed him a little.”

“He fixed me a lot,” I say softly. So softly I’m not even sure if Carly can hear it.

Carly readjusts Max in the crook of her arm. It’s gorgeous, the way he’s soft and pink against the green inked vine twisting up her forearm. By her wrist the vine branches out into a white flower with a yellow center and rainbow colors all around it. It’s the tattoo Bodie drew for me. The one I didn’t get.

I touch it with my index finger.

“I missed you,” she says.

“I missed you too.”

“It’s a mayflower,” she tells me. “It’s the good stuff that comes after too many storms.”

— Chapter 72 —

“Where’s my favorite baby?” Margo asks when she comes back with an armload of grease-spotted takeout bags and a tray of milkshakes.

“He’s in the nursery,” Carly tells her. “They had to weigh and measure him.”