Too late. Maggie also got to her feet but couldn’t muster the energy to do more than that. She stood there, gripping the back of the chair and staring at the table without seeing it.

Instead, she saw bits and pieces of the long night: the snow, thin and stinging, a shivering Kate, the waves battering the bluff, Sam’s terrified eyes, Linnie’s shocked face, the snarl of branches, and herself—once again completely falling apart. Like a boat wrecked on the reefs of the shallows.

“… use some sleep. Hmm? Maggie? Maggie?”

She started. “Sorry?”

The aunt gazed at her in alarm. “I think we’d better call it a night. Come on.” She braced Maggie with a one-armed hug and steered her out of the kitchen. “Let’s get you to bed.” She turned off the kitchen lights. When they reached the hallway, she said softly, “Good night, sweetheart.”

“’Night.”

The aunt waited at the foot of the steep stairs as Maggie headed up, then asked abruptly, “You okay?”

“Yes.” No.

That was what she’d learned tonight. Still so not-okay.

Maggie woke to a drip, drip, drip along the eaves and down the roof, wet snow’s slide and plop. Spring sounds for a winter barely started.

She pressed her hands together. Her palms ached from the brambles. Where else? Lower, her right hip and knees—they hurt from the fall. And her head. That hurt, too.

She wished she could keep sleeping, just blank out the previous night—Kate’s disappearance, Sam and Linnie’s fight. Her own fucking head trip. Oh God. She burrowed deeper under the blankets.

That moment on the bluff—the memory, experience, fact of it—drained her. It had been weeks since she’d suffered that kind of relapse. She had begun to hope she never would again. Only the previous morning, she’d thought, Look at me. I’m sleeping better. I can stay alone in Wren’s cabin and not be afraid. I have good friends. There’s some rough shit going on with Mom and Linnie and Jane, but I’m trying to make things better. Because I can. Because I’m up for the challenge. Because I’m stable and normal enough to help.

Then just hours later, there it was again: the past tearing into the present, and so predictably, herself, getting swallowed by the old fear and pain and being back there.

She hated it. She hated that she hadn’t seen it coming.

From downstairs came Wren’s cautious voice: “Honey? You all right?”

Maggie dried her face with the flat sheet. “Yeah. Just tired.”

The aunt was silent for a moment. “I made blueberry scones if you want some. They’re pretty bad, hard as rocks, actually, but tolerable if you dunk them in coffee.”

Maggie closed her eyes. “Thanks. I’ll be down in a bit.”