This was the trouble with the dead. Eventually they became someone else’s invention.

“They’re like inconsiderate relatives, Jane.

trying to be at peace with her mother’s clutter until she could make sense of it all.

Since her mother died, she had felt almost disembodied.

tiny island, maybe a quarter mile from the cliffs,

hardest part of every day now. Waking up. Remembering where she was and why.

If she wasn’t in Awadapquit indefinitely, staying by herself in her mother’s house, for the first time since her mother’s death.

Allison’s mom, Betty, who seemed proud of Jane in a way her own mother was not.

tiny room was behind a hidden door,