“What? Why would you call an island Mainland?”

“The UK is an island,” Madeleine pointed out. “And I stayed in last night. There was an awful storm.” She shuddered. “I hate thunderstorms.”

“Yeah, I remember the first time we had one and you said we couldn’t sit near any windows. Booster was calmer than you were.”

“Anyway,” Madeleine growled, “I spent the night on the other mainland, and then took the first ferry to South Ronaldsay. Then I island-hopped. It took four hours to get here.”

“Four hours? I looked on Google Maps. Those islands are tiny.”

“Tiny on a map, but plenty to wrangle when you’ve got to time it with ferries and buses.” The Orkney Islands featured a tiny airplane that hopped between many of the islands, but just the sight of it had made Madeleine claustrophobic. Years ago, the school group had been too large to take it, and she wasn’t anxious to try it this time, so she’d stuck with alternative methods. Besides, the plane didn’t go directly to Jorsay, so why bother?

That said, her stomach hadn’t been thrilled with the choppy waters beneath the ferry either.

“So if you spent that long in transit I guess nothing’s, you know, happened yet?”

Madeleine sighed. “Not yet.”

She’d expected to feel something when she set foot on Jorsay: some shock of recognition, a sense that she was in the right place. No dice. It was ground like any other ground. But she wouldn’t let herself be disappointed. Not yet. She’d just gotten here, and she had a month left to go.

“So now what?” Becca asked.

“I’m starving. I’ll go out, forage, and explore the place a little more. It seems more developed than the last time I was here.”

“Are you going to look for that guy right away? What’s his name. Jonathan?”

Madeleine took a deep breath. “Yes. Jonathan.”

The man who’d found her on the shore. The man who’d taken her story seriously, to a degree she’d found alarming at the time. He’d been drunk and unsteady, but he was also the only person she could think of who might have some answers for her.

She hadn’t gotten his last name—she’d been too discombobulated to ask. By the time she’d thought of it, she was already on her way home. “Jonathan” wasn’t much to go on, but this was a tiny island, and he’d given the impression of a lifelong resident. Surely, with a name and a description, someone here would know him.

If he was even still here. Anything could have happened in the meantime. She’d told herself this often, but hope was the hardest thing in the world to kill.

“All right,” Becca said. “Be safe. Do regular check-ins, okay?”