Carlton was full of dark reminders. She didn’t know how well she’d deal with them or how much she’d be able to help her mom or if she’d manage to track down Jane Cannon. But the trip itself seemed straightforward enough. Get into a car and go.

Maggie only needed the car.

After telling her aunt she was taking a walk and would be back in an hour or so, she headed for Sam’s. She didn’t have his number to call him beforehand but wasn’t about to ask her aunt for it. Wren might get the wrong idea. Maggie and Sam’s relationship wasn’t romantic. There was only a friendship, and a new one at that. As much as Sam might complain about Linnie, he still painfully and obviously belonged to her, whether she wanted him or not.

Besides, Maggie wasn’t interested in Sam.

Snow crusted the sides of the parkway. She hunched in her coat and shoved her hands into her pockets. I will never be interested in any guy ever, ever, ever again …

She shivered. The sun was out, but the air felt bitter cold. She should have worn her scarf and gloves. The wind blew from the north, rolling across the lake and shore, collecting the previous night’s snow, and sending the white across the road in sinuous rivulets, like snakes.

Sam seemed like the best person to help Maggie figure out the car situation. She raised her face to the sun and exhaled a cloud. Okay, the only person. The aunt had enough on her mind—Maggie’s mom, a week of obligations, firing the sculpture.

That sculpture … Maggie’s stomach turned queasily. Poor Wren didn’t need Maggie’s worries in addition to her own.

The most pressing worry: finding a vehicle to use for a few days. Maggie didn’t have enough money to pay for a rental and wasn’t old enough anyway. But maybe Sam knew of someone who would lend her a car for a couple hundred.

She reached Wayside, where the woods muffled the sun. The leafless branches cast dark webs on the snowy ground.

The shadows made her uneasy. She walked faster. Her footsteps and breathing sounded loud to her own ears, and the stillness felt like a waiting thing. Heart thudding, she kept her eyes on the bright opening at the end of the tree-lined drive. A creature, maybe a squirrel or bird, created a flurry of movement in a maple’s lower branches. The racket startled her. She broke into a run.

The tunnel of trees ended. The sun shone unimpeded, and a brilliance danced across the lake. She slowed to a slog to catch her breath and glanced around self-consciously, feeling stupid and frazzled and hoping no one had seen her running like a maniac.