For weeks, Lily did everything right.
She came home early. She avoided the bus stop. She left Pages by the back door. She did not answer Julian's messages, and when he stood across the road waiting for her, she walked the other way, with her chin up and her heart in pieces.
It did not work.
He found her anyway. He left notes tucked in her books. Once, he turned up at the gate of the house, with a bag of apples and a stubborn look.
"I'm not asking for anything," he said. "I only want to know you're all right."
"I'm fine, Julian. Please go."
"You don't look fine. You look like you haven't slept in a week."
"I haven't," Lily admitted, before she could stop herself.
He reached through the bars of the gate and put the bag of apples in her hands. His fingers brushed hers. They were warm, and she was so cold.
She did not hear the front door open.
"Mother!" Clara's voice rang across the garden. "Mother, come and see! Come quickly!"
Lily snatched her hand away. Julian turned, startled. Clara stood at the top of the porch steps in her silk robe, one hand pressed to her chest as if she had just witnessed a murder.
"I knew it," she said, loud enough for the neighbors to hear. "I knew she was seeing him behind my back."
"Clara, please," Lily began.
"Don't talk to me." Clara turned and ran inside, calling, "Mother!"
Julian took a step toward the gate. "Lily. What's happening?
"My stepsister. Please, Julian. You have to go."
"I'm not leaving you here."
"Go!" She pushed the gate shut between them. Her voice cracked. "You don't understand. Please. If you care about me, go home."
He stared at her through the iron bars. Then slowly, reluctantly, he backed away. At the end of the road, he stopped and looked back once.
She turned and walked up the drive, knowing, without being told, that something terrible was about to happen.
She was right. She just didn't know how terrible.
That night, Lily worked a double shift at Pages, because Mr. Abel needed cover for a stock count. She did not get home until after eleven. She was tired in a way that made her bones ache. All she wanted was her cot and the thin blanket and the small square of sky through her window.
As she turned into the drive, she stopped.
Under the porch light, scattered across the lawn like debris after a storm, were her things.
Her clothes lay in damp heaps, her three skirts, her two sweaters, her one good coat. Her books were splayed open in the mud, their pages already swelling. Her shoes were thrown against the hedge. A cheap framed photograph of her mother lay face down on the gravel, the glass cracked across the middle.
Lily dropped to her knees.
"No," she whispered. "No, no, no."
She picked up the photograph with trembling hands. She turned it over. The crack ran straight through her mother's smile.
Behind her, the front door opened, and the porch light flicked on, blindingly bright.
"Ah," said Cecilia, from the doorway. "You're home."