She tried to whip through the details and finish, just, please, God, let me get through this, but instead, she tripped over moments, got stuck on stark specifics—Sara Wood standing with Maggie in the frat house, a loud corner rank with beer and sweat; Sara laughing up at the guy who was backing her out of the room; Matthew Dawson smiling at Maggie and handing her a drink; the drink, itself, with its strange salty sweetness and potency; Maggie, uneasy, deciding she should leave, abandoning the half-finished drink on the filthy kitchen counter, looking for Sara, staggering dizzily into a room, “Have you seen Sara? Sara Wood, I mean,” holding her stomach, palming her forehead, trying to focus; Matt exchanging a glance with a shorter guy, then suggesting she check in the basement; Maggie, gripping a bannister to keep herself upright, panicking at the odd weakness in her legs, calling for Sara from the top of the staircase, making her way down, down, down into a cellar, empty, musty, dim, and then not empty because someone, Matt Dawson, was shadowing her and then another guy, too, and then another and another and another and another; and Matt glancing toward the top of the stairs and ordering, “Shut the door.”

Maggie curled up tightly on the old quilt spread across the sand and buried her face in the novel she was reading and not reading.

Its pages smelled like mold. She choked out a sound.

Help.

Friday was better.

For the most part, Maggie was able to concentrate on Villette.

Toward the end of the novel, a great V of geese crossed the sky. The cattails wavered woodenly, except for their shriveled tips, which trembled violently in the wind that swept off the lake.

By late afternoon, she finished the novel and went inside to swap it for another. Middlemarch sat on top of her stack of new books. The novel was huge. That nosy girl at the bookstore was right: This one would keep Maggie busy for a while.

When she flipped through it, something fell out of its pages—a small rectangle of paper that swooped to her feet. It was a payroll check made out to a Carina Applegate. A check for two hundred and thirty dollars.

Maggie picked it up. That was a lot of money. Whoever she was, Carina Applegate was probably missing it. Maggie would have to drop off the check at the bookstore. It was dated the first of August. Would a bank cash a seven-week-old check? Maybe it was too late—and Maggie would be off the hook. Automatically, she picked up her phone to call her dad. He’d know.

As soon as she thumbed her password, she came out of her distraction and realized her mistake. “Shit,” she said, absorbing the daunting numbers bubbled over the icons. “Oh shit.”