Page 9

"I'll call when I can."

"You'd better."

Her voice broke on the last word, and she pulled away before I could get a proper look at her face.

I hugged her again because I loved her, even though I was still furious with her. I didn't know how to make those two things sit comfortably together, and maybe they weren't supposed to.

What else did you burn?

The question came back immediately, along with all the others I hadn't asked. What else had she hidden from me? How much of the childhood I was leaving behind had depended on things she had deliberately kept secret?

But the gray car was waiting at the curb, and Marion's hands were trembling against my back, so I kept the questions to myself.

I walked down the short front path, listening to my boots scrape against the paving stones. When I reached the curb, I turned around.

Marion was still standing on the step in her robe, her arms folded tightly against the cold as she tried to look stern. Behind her was the blue front door, the crooked brass number, and above it the window of the room that had been mine since I was nine. I stood there for another second, trying to fix all of it in my memory.

Then the driver took my rucksack from me and opened the rear door.

I slid into the back seat, and the door closed behind me with a solid, heavy thud. Suddenly Marion was on the other side of glass, along with the house and everything familiar inside it.

My hand almost went to the door handle.

Instead, Marion raised one hand.

I raised mine in return, and the car pulled away.

I had one rucksack with me. The letter had said, Bring nothing you cannot carry, and apparently that wasn't much of a restriction. Three years with Daniel, twenty-two years of being alive, and almost everything I had chosen to keep fit on my back. There was even enough room left for a packet of cookies.

We drove north for six hours.

The driver didn't speak once. He didn't answer when I asked where we were going, and after the third attempt, I gave up and watched the view change through the window.

The towns grew smaller and farther apart until there were only villages, then farms, then stretches of bare hills with sheep scattered across them. The farther north we went, the emptier everything became, and the gray sky seemed to stretch farther in every direction.

Sometime after noon, I fell asleep.

When I woke, the car had stopped at the end of a stone harbor wall. Beyond the windshield there was only gray water disappearing into fog.

A ferry was waiting for me.

It was small and old, with faded green paint, a cramped wheelhouse, an open deck, and a rope rail around the edge. The driver got out, handed my rucksack to a man in oilskins, gave me a single nod, and climbed back into the car.

Then he drove away.

There was no explanation and no goodbye.

"Don't take it personally," a voice said behind me. "They're like that with everyone. I asked mine if he wanted a chip and he looked at me like I'd said something deeply offensive."

I turned.

A girl was sitting on an overturned crate beside the rail with a family-size bag of salt-and-vinegar chips open on her knee. She was short and round-faced, with copper curls escaping from beneath a wool hat and an oversized yellow raincoat that nearly swallowed her. She looked about my age.

She held the bag toward me.

"Tamsin," she said. "Tamsin Reed. Want one? They're the good ones. Strong enough to remove the inside of your mouth."

I took one because refusing somehow seemed more awkward.