Lena’s hand grips mine as we climb up and up, our heels clicking on metal, over the churning dark water where the river meets the Atlantic. I don’t look down. I try my best to feel brave.

If the ship looked big from the ground, it is even more overwhelming to be aboard. The length of at least a city block, the upper deck gleams with neat rows of polished oak and the blinding white of fresh paint on metal hulls. Smokestacks sit like four identical, enormous cigarettes, painted tan at the bottom and capped with charcoal gray.

Staff in the same navy-blue uniform as the ticket taker rush by, luggage and papers in their hands. Families in neat traveling clothes mill about the deck, their eyes as wide as mine.

Maxine and Lena race to the railing and tilt their faces up to the midmorning sun, letting it wash over them. From just over their shoulders peeks the impassive face of the Statue of Liberty, far off in the bay.

And deep in my pocket rests a piece of paper with an address. Just a single scrap, but it feels so heavy.

The paper is a formality at this point, really. I’ve stared at it so often; I have its contents memorized.

36 Rue de Vis, Paris, France.

They don’t need to know, I reassure myself, staring at my friends who stand across the deck, pressed against the railing, letting the ocean air tangle in their hair. They’re laughing at a joke I didn’t hear, and I’d never shatter this moment for them, rob them of the peace they’ve earned. They didn’t need to know about Finn’s letter then, and they don’t need to know about the address now.

I’m sparing them the confusion, the heartache.

What’s one more thing to bury in the graveyard of my chest?

What is a secret, if not an act of love?

CHAPTER TWO

Our cabin is larger than any bedroom at Haxahaven, even Florence and Ann’s apartment on the top floor. Lena and I both gasp as the porter swings open the door. Maxine barrels through, treading dirt from the dock into the thick beige carpet and throwing a hatbox onto the settee in the parlor room. We have a settee in a parlor room. I don’t know what we could possibly need a full set of bone china for during six days at sea, but we have an entire cabinet of it, next to the dining room table, polished so bright I can see my own reflection in it. I count the teacups instead of staring out the round window that looks out onto nothing but the endless, dark-blue expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Twelve teacups. Twelve teacups and thousands of miles of water to cross.