There are photos, too. In one she looks five or so, standing on the beach—Malibu?—holding a pearly pink seashell in her hand, bare feet half swallowed by sand. Several feature a preteen Cameron next to a girl about the same age, but fair where Cameron is tawny, with a heavy blond ponytail next to Cameron’s glossy black curtain. In some, both girls have the same hairstyle as if they were looking for ways to get closer. Closer to being the same person. That’s what young friendship is, I remember. You meld, and it feels wonderful. Like you’ll never be separated.

“That’s Caitlyn,” Emily says from the door with fresh mugs of tea in her hands, tendrils of steam rising like flame. “They were best friends from the time we moved here until the end of seventh grade.”

I look back down at the photo, at Caitlyn’s wide smile and glinting metal braces. The earrings she’s wearing, pink enamel hearts. “Then a falling-out?”

“I think so. Cameron wouldn’t talk about it. I was worried about her, actually. She seemed so sad. She told me no one sat with her at lunch. She didn’t seem to have any friends at all, and then Gray came along. Thank God.”

“Misfits find each other.”

She looks taken aback. “What do you mean, ‘misfits’?”

“It’s not a criticism. Some people feel out of place when they’re young, not because anything’s wrong with them, but because there’s something special that sets them apart. Something they haven’t figured out yet.”

“Figured out? What are you saying?”

I can feel her confusion palpably and decide to tread a little more lightly, leaving my suspicions about Gray out of it. “Well, with Cameron it might be about identity. She had another life behind her, like turning the page of a book. Maybe she’d begun to wonder about that. About where she might fit.”

“She fits here,” Emily said defensively. “She belongs with us.”

“Of course. All I mean is that when hard things happen for kids, they often think they did something to cause it. That it’s their fault.”

Emily is wearing an oatmeal-colored cashmere sweater and soft suede loafers, her tawny hair held back in a tortoiseshell clasp. Everything about her is neutral and refined, smoothed to perfection. But her eyes have grown clouded. “We tried to show her every day how much we loved her.”

“I believe you. But someone gave her away, Emily. It’s hard to get over that, even into adulthood.”