But there wasn’t anything from the Academy in the stack. It was mostly catalogs and junk and then a small square envelope that peeked out from underneath a bill.

The return address said Boston, and there was her own name, written in handwriting she hadn’t seen in ages. The big round A. The ns that joined together, as if they were holding hands. Her last name, Wilner—the name only she still had now, since Mom had taken Mitch’s when they got married—written with a big, pointy W and an r that flattened out into a line.

She grabbed the envelope and bolted up to her room, her heart pounding against her rib cage as her feet pounded against the stairs.

Her fingers shook hard enough that she gave herself a paper cut when she tore the letter open. A white line appeared on her finger, and after a second, it filled up with a round red blob. Some of the blood stained the corner of the paper, and she sucked on her fingertip to make the bleeding stop.

Dear Annie, the letter started.

She had almost forgotten that he called her that, which was ridiculous. It hadn’t been that long.

I’ve wanted to be in touch with you for a long time, but now that I am writing, I don’t know quite what to say. I’m sorry, for starters. I’m sorry for being absent and nothing like the kind of father I always planned to be. I think of you often and will love you always. I’m doing much better now. I moved to Boston with a friend, and if you ever want to see me, my door will always be open. Please write back any time you want to. I would love to hear from you, and I miss you every single day.

Love, Dad

Annabelle read the letter twice, and she didn’t even notice that tears were streaming down her face until the words began to blur. She grabbed a bunch of tissues from the box on her bedside table, wiped off her face, and wrapped one around the cut on her finger. Then she read the note a third time, focusing on the big takeaways and lingering questions, the way Ms. Ames always told her to do at school.

Dad was in Boston, only a couple of hours away. He had moved there with a friend. A girlfriend?

Could he have moved closer on purpose? Because he wanted to be near Annabelle?

That idea was way too earthshakingly enormous to consider. She buried the letter under the stack of school notebooks and binders that still sat on her desk and picked up Kelsey Bennett’s shell, which she hadn’t even realized she’d brought upstairs.

She had a shell lamp with a clear glass base on the nightstand next to her bed. Mitch had given it to her when they first moved to the island, and she and Mom had walked up and down the beach, searching for the best shells to fill it up with. Whole ones, without broken edges.