“Look straight at the lighthouse and make a wish to come back next summer!” she told them.

Annabelle knew about the Bruck Point Lighthouse wish tradition. People used to throw pennies into the water for good luck, to make sure they’d return. Over the years, the penny part had stopped because it wasn’t good for the fish or seagulls, but people had kept up the wishing.

Annabelle looked out at the open ocean instead of back at the black-and-white lighthouse. Whitecaps crashed against the sides of the ferry, but it slid along, too big to be shaken by even the biggest waves. Ahead of her, Cape Cod was there in the distance, past the edge of what she could see. That’s where she’d get the bus that would take her to Boston.

For today, it was better to focus her eyes forward, even without a point to wish on, than to look back toward home.

The round-trip bus fare from the ferry terminal into Boston was $36 because she was too old for the child rate she and Mia had gotten last summer. She’d already spent $4 on the cab and $40 on her round-trip ferry ticket, and she needed $2.20 for a student CharlieCard to take two trips on the T.

That meant she’d have only $1.80 of her $84 left over.

She sucked it up and handed over the money. It was okay, she told herself. All she really needed to spend money on was transportation. Dad worked at a coffee shop, after all. He’d give her food when she got there. One of his special strawberry grilled cheese sandwiches.

She checked the time on her phone as she sat down to wait for the bus. Ten minutes until her tutoring session with Janine.

Janine was going to text Mom when she didn’t show up, and then Mom would call Annabelle right away. She was lucky the physical therapist hadn’t called Mitch already—or that Mitch was busy and hadn’t taken the call.

She used her phone to look up how to take the T to the address on Dad’s envelope. He’d said the coffee shop was down the street from where he lived, and she figured that’s where he’d be. She wrote the directions on the back of her ferry ticket and then sent a quick text to both Mom and Mitch.

I’m going to Boston for the day. I’m sorry. I’m fine and will see you tonight. Love you.

She thought about adding, Please don’t worry, but she knew that was pointless. So she just turned off her phone so she wouldn’t have to read their frantic messages and they couldn’t track where she was and show up at Dad’s coffee shop to drag her home.

On the bus, Annabelle tried to call up some good memories of her dad. She grabbed onto a few: Dad staying home with her when she was sick, bringing her apple-sauce and cinnamon toast and watching game shows with her on TV. That swim out to the buoy the summer they went to the Jersey Shore. Dad carrying her around on his shoulders at the Labor Day parade so she could see and riding the teacups with her over and over at the carnival afterward.