The trees grow taller in my mind, the woods get darker, but it’ll be okay. I’ll be with Max.

Ten years of no contact and it turns out Max and I live twenty miles apart. I could have got on the train as soon as I phoned Dad to tell him I was coming, but instead I’m waiting for Max, hovering and looking out of the window for his arrival like I used to as a teenager. I chew my lip. Dad sounded so relieved I was coming back. I hate to think how much strain he’s been under since Julia was diagnosed. How lonely he must be.

After Bella died, Julia was the strong one, thrown into this family just as we all fell apart. She did all the practical stuff while me and Dad tottered around, shell-shocked and completely messed up.

But there was always that sticking point—if she’d never come into our lives, Bella would probably still be alive. The knowledge has been a festering thorn in my side for ten years and it makes it hard to be in the same room with her without constantly wondering what if. The relationship we’d been building, stepmother and stepdaughter, destroyed by Bella’s death.

Christ, I’m not sure I can go through with this. I’m wondering if I have time to call Sophie for another pep talk when I hear the toot of a horn and head downstairs on shaking legs.

The sun is out today and I shade my eyes to see him as he gets out of the car. Max. My Max.

“Hey, Hardy-girl,” Max says, and I let him fold me up in his arms. He smells different, but his arms feel the same, still give me the same strength as he squeezes tight. Maybe he can help me channel my inner Maeve Larson.

He looks the same but different as well, same lean frame and short brown hair, same brown eyes that I’d wistfully sigh over in the way only a teenage girl can. The years have added a couple of fine lines, turned the teenage lankiness into a more muscled leanness, but he’s lost none of the crooked-smile gorgeousness I daydreamed about.

“God, you look amazing,” he says. “It’s weird, I never thought you and Bella were alike, but look at you now.”

I pull away too quickly, almost shoving him away from me.

“I’m sorry—but you walked out and if it weren’t for the hair, it could have been her.”

Always her, never me. Even if she weren’t in my dreams, her ghost would still be with me.

“Where’s Lena?” I ask, interrupting him, looking for his sister.

“In the car,” he says. I look over and see her through the window. She’s slumped on the back seat, asleep, dark glasses covering her eyes.

“Is she okay?”