And he knew what it was like to be bad at school. He knew what it was like to mess up and make Mom worry.

Yeah, there had been a lot of moments when she’d thought it would be easier if Mitch were her real dad. But Mitch wasn’t her dad, and Mitch had daughters of his own, and she had no guarantee that everything could go back to that easy, cozy way it had been between them now that she had ruined her chances with swimming and made him mad instead of proud.

Here with Mom and Mitch, Annabelle was like those brand-new cedar beams on their deck—the ones that had clashed with the weathered old ones and bothered her mom so much when they’d first moved in.

She didn’t fit with smart, successful Mom and Mitch, and she didn’t fit at school, and now she couldn’t try to fit on the high school swim team, either. And unlike those deck beams, she wouldn’t get any closer to matching as time went on.

Dad was doing better, and he was nearby, and he missed her. It seemed so obvious now, that of course she should write him back. She couldn’t believe she’d waited so long.

She waved goodbye to the Bennetts, told Mom it was too hot outside, and rushed up to her room, where she opened her half-filled notebook from last year’s science class and started to write.

Chapter 22

Annabelle wrote the letter over and over until she got the tone right—more times than Mr. Derrickson made her rewrite the beginning of her history essays. In the end, she decided to start with easy stuff: how much she liked walking on the little beach near the cottage in the off-season, with a thermos of hot chocolate and the wind whipping her hair; how the locals got annoyed with the summer people for swooping in as soon as the sun warmed the sand but bolting before the threat of hurricanes; how the fly was still her best stroke, but she raced in free, too.

She didn’t write about school or her wrist or swimming with the high school team. And she asked questions, but not too many and nothing too personal. Just how Dad liked Boston, and if he was still going to root for the Yankees even though he was now in Red Sox country.

Finally, she added a P.S.

It would be nice to come to Boston to see you. Since it’s the summer, I have plenty of time.

It would be too weird to have Mom or Mitch go with her, but maybe they would let her go by herself. The ferry left from the harbor right in town, down the hill from the Creamery. She knew how to get from the ferry terminal to the bus stop on the Cape, and the bus went right to South Station in Boston. Since she sometimes went with Mia’s family, she knew how to take the T around the city, too. She could even tell Mom and Mitch that she and Mia were going to visit Jeremy at his summer program but then go to Dad’s instead.