Mom’s sadness undid her. Maggie put out her hand and accepted the phone, accepted the tight hug, too, and let Mom tuck the charger in her hoodie pocket.

After her mother left, Maggie went up to the loft to charge the phone. When it was plugged in, she stayed crouched by the short wall, holding the phone and staring at its screen, before abruptly dropping it on the floor. Rising, she swiped her hands against her sweats, then hurried down the stairs.

Maggie had one objective for the foreseeable future: to work on keeping the worst parts of her mind from working. But she didn’t want to just bum around, reading and beachcombing. Well, she kind of did, but that didn’t seem very fair to her aunt—not that Wren had said anything about her earning her keep.

Since Maggie couldn’t cook, she figured she’d clean. On Monday, the day after Mom left, she polished, swept, and scrubbed her way through the cabin.

At suppertime, clay-streaked and rubbing her neck, the aunt entered the kitchen and froze. “Wow.” She took in the room with wide eyes. “Thanks, Margaret.”

Tuesday passed. Then Wednesday. Maggie got into a solitary routine, eating suppers with Aunt Wren but otherwise idling along by herself. Their meals weren’t major productions. Toast and more toast. Soup, then leftover soup. Maggie ate little and quickly, and whenever she took breaks from the beach and returned to the cabin, she washed any dishes she found in the sink.

Mostly, Maggie just read—primarily outside. The beach was preferable to the loft. She hadn’t checked her phone yet. Still attached to the charger, it seemed to be waiting for her. Do it. Get it over with, she kept telling herself. But always, the thought of hundreds of unread emails and texts stopped her.

Hateful words were buried in the inbox. She was sure of this. And they were like land mines. She didn’t want to risk being blasted. Or reeled back to the past.

So she stuck to the outside as much as she could. On an old quilt from the loft, spread across some sand by the cattails, where the shoreline began its curve toward the rugged peninsula, she plodded through Villette. Lucy Snowe’s world distracted her—until Thursday rolled around. On Thursday, she read whole chapters without absorbing a word.

Her own story, the narrative that wouldn’t leave her brain, took over. Her memory of what had happened last year … it was like a book, too; more like a flipbook with random pages torn out, a story she was forced to read.