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Willow lied, saying, “I’m getting over heartbreak right now, unfortunately.”

“Isn’t that the best time to fall in love again?” James asked.

Willow said she’d get back to him if she decided it was. But when James wrote his son’s phone number on a piece of paper, she wadded it up and shoved it in her pocket, knowing she’d never return to it.

For the first several days, Willow did little more than explore. Sometimes she spoke to her mother, Donna, in her mind, asking, "Am I on the right track?" Did you ever consider who my birth mother was and why she gave me up? Sometimes, she sat before the roaring Nantucket Sound, searching for answers in the waves. But nothing ever came.

The afternoon of the fourth day, Willow sat near the harbor in a shell of sunlight. She drank a coffee and read a book by James Joyce, marveling at how delicious it was to fill her days with whatever she wanted. Maybe she wouldn’t investigate her biological mother after all. Maybe coming here was all the healing she needed.

And then, a man approached her, looking at her as though he’d seen her before. As though she were a ghost from a forgotten time.

“Hi there,” he said.

Willow stood and assessed him. He had dark hair and large, all-seeing eyes. His clothes needed repair, and his T-shirt could have used a bleach wash. But mostly, he seemed harmless, or as harmless as any man who approaches a young woman can be.

“Hi,” she said.

The man furrowed his brow deeply, as though he were trying to read her. “I wanted to ask you,” he said. “I’m a photographer. Seeing you here reminds me of someone I used to know. Someone I lost a long time ago. Can I take your picture?”

Willow sucked in her cheeks. “I suppose, yeah. You can.”

She was flattered, sort of, as the man stepped back and took a few shots of her with his film camera, an old-world thing that Willow wouldn’t have been able to use if she tried. But there was nothing romantic or creepy about it. He took his art very seriously.

“Thank you,” he said when he was finished. She watched as he tenderly put his camera back in its bag and swung it over his shoulder.

“Can I see your work somewhere?” she asked.

Via her phone, the man typed in his social media channel, which led her to a string of his truly beautiful photographs. “I’ve been traveling lately,” he explained. “Up and down the coast. I have a sailboat there.” He pointed at one of the boats, clicking against the dock it was attached to. On his profile, his name read Rhett. Willow smiled, remembering how much Donna had loved Gone with the Wind.

“I hope I can see my photograph someday,” Willow said.

Rhett smiled. “Do you live on the island?”

“No,” she said. “I’m visiting.”

Rhett clucked his tongue. “Me too, although I’m from here, originally.”

“Does your family still live here?”

“Everybody’s gone,” Rhett said sadly, his eyes tracing the tops of the historic buildings behind her.

After Rhett went on his way, Willow felt jittery. She scouted up and down the boardwalk, unable to shake the way he’d looked at her. Suddenly, she felt the desire to talk to Eleanor Pike. The desire to get to the heart of why she was here. She needed to stop wasting time.

Willow’s phone built a walking route from the boardwalk to Eleanor Pike’s Victorian home. Standing on the sidewalk, clenching and unclenching her hands, Willow tried to envision Ralph coming here in the middle of some godforsaken night to fetch Willow, the infant, from this very home. How was it possible that one of the most pivotal moments of her life had happened here?

Willow walked up the steps. It was nearly five in the evening, and the day's heat was dying quickly. She imagined that a woman as old as Eleanor assuredly was in for the night. She prayed she was, as Willow wasn’t sure if she’d find the strength to approach her house like this again. She raised her finger and pressed the bell.

Then she heard the click of a cane and the light thud of a foot. Willow’s heart fluttered in her neck. When the door opened, revealing an elegant woman nearly five inches taller than Willow, Willow nearly stumbled back with alarm. Behind the woman, the house was immaculately designed, with sweeping silks, hanging plants, and orange lights. Willow yearned to be drawn inside, to fall comfortably into a world someone else had designed so purposely.

“Good evening,” Willow began, her voice shaking. “Are you Eleanor Pike?”

The woman raised her eyebrows. “I am,” she said. “And you are?”

But there was a glint in Eleanor’s eye that reminded Willow of Rhett’s furrowed brow. She thought, Eleanor knows exactly who I am and why I’m here.

“I’m Willow Cay,” she said. “My mother was Donna Cay. Adopted mother.”

For the briefest of moments, Eleanor fluttered her eyelids, as though she were considering what to do, how to handle Willow. Willow suddenly feared she’d taken the woman out, physically. That her return was such a shock Eleanor would faint.