“Do you want breakfast? I found some cereal in the cupboard.”

“I’m not hungry, Mom.”

“You need to eat, sweetie.”

Ronnie continued to stare at the pile of photos, seeing nothing at all. “I was wrong, Mom. And I don’t know what to do now.”

“You mean about your dad?”

“About everything.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

When Ronnie didn’t answer, her mom crossed the room and sat beside her.

“Sometimes it helps if you talk. You’ve been so quiet these last couple of days.”

For an instant, Ronnie felt a crush of memories overwhelm her: the fire and subsequent rebuilding of the church, the stained-glass window, the song she’d finally finished. She thought about Blaze and Scott and Marcus. She thought about Will. She was eighteen years old and remembering the summer she’d been betrayed, the summer she’d been arrested, the summer she’d fallen in love. It hadn’t been so long ago, yet sometimes she felt that she’d been an altogether different person back then.

Ronnie sighed. “What about Jonah?”

“He’s not here. Brian took him to the shoe store. He’s like a puppy. His feet are growing faster than the rest of him.”

Ronnie smiled, but her smile faded as quickly as it had come. In the silence that followed, she felt her mom gather her long hair and twist it into a loose ponytail on her back. Her mom had been doing that ever since Ronnie was a little girl. Strangely, she still found it comforting. Not that she’d ever admit it, of course.

“I’ll tell you what,” her mom went on. She went to the closet and put the suitcase on the bed. “Why don’t you talk while you pack?”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“How about at the beginning? Jonah mentioned something about turtles?”

Ronnie crossed her arms, knowing the story hadn’t started there. “Not really,” she said. “Even though I wasn’t there when it happened, I think the summer really began with the fire.”