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“We sort of...” He looked at Abby helplessly, and she rolled her eyes.

“Liam was just showing his new girlfriend around, to impress her,” she said. “We’re dating now. Whee.”

I might have been jealous if they weren’t so obviously horrified by the necessary deception.

“It’s just a cover,” Liam said. “I’m not—”

“I get it,” I said. “It was smart.”

“Okay, enough with the tedious romantic subplot. What happened to you?” Abby asked. Lily walked past in the hall, and we fell silent.

“Let’s take a walk,” I suggested. We headed out to the beach and wandered down it in the pale morning light. I told them what had happened, every step of it. The other island, the strangers, my flight down the hill, the half-formed house. And then I got to Mikhail.

“What do you think?” I asked Abby when I was done.

“About what?” She tucked her hair behind her ear, a losing battle against the wind.

“Mikhail. What he said.”

“I think he was telling you as little as he could,” she said. “He’s hiding something.”

“You don’t know that,” Liam said.

“No. She’s right,” I said. I didn’t want her to be. Mikhail had helped me. He’d been kind, and wounded, and lost. But he knew more than he’d said, I was certain. “But it doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t?” Abby asked with a skeptical arch to her eyebrow.

“No. Because whatever he is or isn’t telling us, we know the important thing. What happened to my mother—to me—happened on Belaya Skala. I’ve crossed over to that other world twice, but never on the headland. We need to get over there if we’re going to find the truth.”

“You want to go back to that place?” Liam asked.

“If it gets me answers,” I said.

“You shouldn’t go alone,” Abby said.

“I can’t ask you both to risk yourselves for me,” I said. “Especially you, Liam. Abby has her own reasons, but you...”

He hadn’t looked at me yet. “I’m not exactly doing it for you,” he said. He swallowed. “I want to help you, but it’s not just that.”

“What, then?” I asked.

“That summer, the summer of the Girl in the Boat, something changed,” Liam said. “I was really young, but I remember how close Dr. Kapoor and I were. She’s the one that convinced Mum to have a kid in the first place. But after that summer, she never had time for me. She barely spoke to me at all, or looked at Mum, except when they were fighting. And then she left and came back here. And it was a relief, because it felt like we’d been living with a stranger.” His voice was raw and thick with bitterness.

Abby looked away, clearly uncomfortable, but on impulse I reached out and grabbed Liam’s hand. He didn’t meet my eyes, but he squeezed my hand and took a deep breath. And then he continued.

“I’ve always thought that she just realized she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. But it wasn’t just me—she used to be incredibly close with her parents, but she hardly ever sees them now. And with all of this, I just...” He faltered, then set his jaw and looked straight at me. “What if wewereliving with a stranger? What if she isn’t here because of the bloody birds?”

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“What Mikhail said. Sometimes people come out of the mist, and they look the same, and they sound the same, but it’s not them.” Liam asked. His eyes were dark, intense, and fixed on me. “What if what came out of the mist isn’t my mother at all?”

VIDEO EVIDENCE

Recorded by Joy Novak

AUGUST 14, 2003, TIME UNKNOWN

The group calls out to keep track of each other in the mist. Novak and Baker are together still, falling behind as Novak’s injury slows her. The occasional glimpses of the landscape ahead of them show the others as indistinct silhouettes in the mist, sometimes nearly vanishing completely.