Now that I knew, I could see Lolly Shipley. I could see her so, so clearly. The foyer faded, and I was standing by that smashed-in car, swaying on the dark road, hearing Tig Simms moan. These round eyes, still the same shade of blue, fringed with soft brown lashes, had looked right at me. This mouth, still a rosebud framed by full cheeks, this exact mouth had opened, had said, Amy? Paul is cry.

So many unconnected details I had culled about her life over the past few months shifted, clicked into focus. The little brother, who had grown up and joined the service and “fallen for a fr?ulein” while stationed in Germany, that was Paul. Baby Paul, who’d had colic, and who’d needed to be driven round and round the neighborhood by his exhausted mother in the wee hours of the morning. Char’s difficult father, who struggled with depression and imperfect sobriety, that was Mr. Shipley, the man I’d made a widower with a business and two little kids to manage alone. Her dead mother . . . oh, I knew who that was.

My vision swam, and I might have fallen if Davis hadn’t hooked an arm around me, “Hey, now! Amy! Are you okay?”

I shook my head, tried to laugh, though my hands clutched at his arm. “I probably shouldn’t have had that second G&T.”

“Let me get you home,” Davis said, and then, thank God, he got me out of there.

I barely remembered him dropping me off. I went straight to my bathroom, where I threw up Char’s chicken divan, her garlic green beans, and her strawberry shortcake until I was dead empty. Then I knelt on the cool tiles, gagging on my own bile. When my stomach finally stopped spasming, I crept to my bed, and for hours I lay awake, thinking I would quit my job, hurl my belongings pell-mell into my car, and flee back to California. It meant leaving Maddy and Davis—that thought hurt me like a knife drawn slow across my skin—but I had to give Florida back to Lolly Shipley. How could I do otherwise? I didn’t fall asleep until almost dawn.

I woke up late, still determined to start packing. While I stared blearily into my first untouched cup of coffee, the phone rang. I picked it up on autopilot, not thinking, without even glancing at the caller ID.

It was Charlotte, calling to check up on me.

“Are you okay? You got the wibbles last night, right at the end.”

I assured her I was fine, but she didn’t get off the phone. She was rosy with a natural-born hostess’s pleasure in last night’s success. I could hear her pouring her own coffee, then settling in for a dinner-party postmortem, asking if the chicken had been dry and what I thought of her flowers. I answered as best I could, horrified. I didn’t have the right to be taking calls from Lolly Shipley.

But as she went on, rehashing everything Davis had said to me, gauging his interest and mine, making teasing kissy noises, I realized I had even less right to refuse to take her calls.

I was already so connected to her life. I wondered what she would think when she called tomorrow and found that my phone was disconnected. Would it hurt her? The last thing I wanted was to hurt Lolly Shipley. I couldn’t simply disappear.

I needed to set it up, talk about a job offer, ease out of her life. This, I realized, meant time. Time with Maddy and Davis, time with her. I wanted it. I wanted every extra minute with a longing so fierce it shook me. It made me understand exactly how deep I had embedded here.

While all this was swirling in my head, Char turned serious. Just for a moment.

“Don’t take this wrong, okay? You’re barely twelve years older than me, and you’re super pretty, so really, really, do not take this wrong,” she said. “But Lisa Fenton, last night, she called you my mom-friend. Isn’t that funny?”

I knew the term because I taught so many kids and teenagers. In Maddy’s class the title had gone to a boy named Simon. He was the one who had to check everybody’s trim, who tried to track the whole group’s no-stop dive times, who kept saying at Summer Social, Y’all, don’t gulp those milk shakes, you’ll get brain freeze!

“I’m not insulted,” I said.

I wasn’t. I was overwhelmed. She was joking, but there had been vulnerability in her inflection when she’d asked if I thought it was funny. And this word: mom. Even tethered to a piece of teen slang, it was a weighted word when it came at me out of Lolly Shipley’s mouth.

She must have heard that I was choked up, because she turned serious.

“Well, I liked it. Maybe because I don’t really remember my own mom. Or maybe because you started as my teacher. But I’m . . . I liked it, is all. When she said that.”

I took a long, shaky breath, because in that moment I could see it. A way to stay. I’d returned to Florida to make things right with Tig, and I’d been rewarded with Char’s friendship, even though I’d chickened out and only helped him secretly. What if I could help Char secretly, too? And if her brother, Paul, had troubles, she’d tell me, and I could step in. If bad times stayed away, I’d work with my lawyers to set up anonymous scholarships for any kids they had. I would care for all three of them, Tig, Char, and Paul, behind the scenes, if only I could stay.

“Me, too,” I said, and I more than meant it. “I like being your mom-friend.” I said those words like a promise, like a vow. If I took this silent path, it might lead me toward redemption. If the universe let me have Maddy and Davis, I would know that I was close enough for it to count. I’d know I had done enough right by Tig Simms to count, too.

Char made a pleased sound and lightened the conversation, complaining that Phillip had not helped her with cleanup. Getting her house back in order was taking up the morning, but she’d promised an elderly neighbor she would drive her to the doctor.

I wasn’t working until four, and I thought, Here. Here is a small, good thing that I can do, right now. For Lolly Shipley.

I had to talk her into letting me, but I won out, seeing it as a start on all the ways I could be present for her.

It wasn’t simple. At first I couldn’t look at her face without seeing Lolly. I’d come home from every outing, every visit with her, headachy and exhausted. I started misbehaving with food, not eating for ten hours, or twenty, or forty. When I finally broke, I would gorge myself, then purge.

I thought about confessing to her, but what truth could I have said? Char, when gently pressed, told me simply that her mother had been killed by a drunk driver. A teenage boy, she said. Not “a couple of teenagers” or even “a carful of teenagers.” Just a boy. Even if I said, My maiden name was Smith. I’m Amy Smith, it would mean nothing without hours of awful explanations. And to what end? Any confession would be for me, not her, to wring her out for drops of absolution.

I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t leave her. I couldn’t look at her.

I had to separate them out, Lolly and Charlotte. For the sake of my own sanity.

I had the idea while I was diving, hovering over the deck of a wrecked schooner, playing my light over a pair of angelfish to make their sunshine-yellow sides flash. Lolly had gone into the water once, and she’d been trapped in that inhospitable blue. It had left her with a lingering terror. But I had given water back to Char, hadn’t I? Now it was a good place for her.

I thought, Maybe I can leave her there. Not Char herself, of course. Not even Lolly, but my pain-soaked memory of her, the avatar of all my guilt. I could feel her with me every minute, palpable and so, so heavy.

Down in the vast and breathing blue, she was like all my other sins. She was rendered tiny in the vastness, just like me. Under, she was small enough to carry, weighty enough to sink. All I had to do was let her go.

It was hard to open my hands, though. I imagined her little face, tilted up to mine, peaceful and unafraid. I imagined she was smiling, giving me permission. My fists unclenched, and she went down, faster than I would have thought. I came up from that dive lighter.

Lighter every time, because it became a mental exercise, a meditation. I took my heavy sorrow under with me, every dive, and I let her go into that place of otherworldly beauty, the place where I was most myself. After a few months, I didn’t even need to dive to do it. It was a movie I ran in my head every time I filled my mouth with food but couldn’t seem to swallow, every time I felt I didn’t deserve a bite of bread, or even my next breath. I folded my memories and guilt up in her baby arms and let her sink into the unending blue inside me. I learned to never, never, never go that deep.

After a while when I looked at her real face, I only saw my friend, Char Baxter. When I thought of Lolly, I only saw blue bubbles rising. Diving had taught me how to be present only in each moment. Under the waves there was never anything but breath and now. I could be present in that way with Char, too, I learned. Just breathe, and love the person she’d grown into. It felt so meant-to-be.