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summer when they lived across the hall from each other. Whenever Carrie ran into Allison in the hallway or down by the mailboxes, they’d exchange polite greetings and go on their way.
    Every time that happened, Carrie was left shaken. She’d gone to such great lengths to engineer the whole thing—now what?
    What was she supposed to do next? What did she want out of all that? She thought she knew . . . until she found herself face-to-face with Allison. It infuriated her that there wasn’t a flicker of recognition in those blue eyes, but . . .
    But by then, you were too distracted by Mack to let it bother you as much as it might have. By then, you were foolishly thinking you could escape the hand you’d been dealt, and live a normal life.
    Now, though, that time has dulled those foolish hopes and dreams—and the sting of having been forgotten by Allison—it’s all more amusing than anything. To think that she’d been right under Allison’s nose all that time . . .
    To think that, after Carrie’s “death,” Allison— of all people, of all people!— went and married the grieving widower . . .
    Unbelievable. Daddy used to tell me that I could be a writer when I grew up because I was so good at making up stories, but I couldn’t come up with this stuff if I tried.
    That final twist—Allison marrying Mack—was, like September 11, just another cosmic coincidence; a sign that the stars have aligned so that she—
    Her thought curtailed by a sudden blast of noise, Carrie thinks, for a moment, that it’s the bomb going off back at the Big Iguana.
    But it can’t be. A glance at Molly’s glow-in-the-dark Timex, now strapped around her own wrist, tells her that it’s not time yet. It’s only five o’clock—on the dot.
    The noise, she realizes, was one she’s heard nightly, repeatedly, from shore; a noise that sounds drastically different when it’s coming from somewhere overhead: it’s the ship’s giant horn blasting the news that they’re setting sail.
    Carrie smiles.
    It worked. It really worked.
    She’s going home.

PART II
    Night-dreams trace on Memory’s wall,
    Shadows of the thoughts of day;
    And thy fortunes as they fall,
    the bias of the will betray.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson

Chapter Three
    Kingsbury County, South Dakota
    July 11, 1977
    â€œH igher, Daddy! Push me higher!”
    â€œAny higher, and you’re going to go right up to the moon!”
    â€œI want to! I want to go over the moon, like the cow in the nursery rhyme!”
    â€œYou’re getting too old for nursery rhymes,” he told her.
    â€œI am not!”
    â€œSure you are. No more ‘Hey, Diddle-Diddle’ for you!”
    â€œYes! I like ‘Hey, Diddle-Diddle’! And I like ‘Jack Be Nimble,’ and I like ‘Little Boy Blue,’ and—oh! I know! I want to go over the moon so that I can see the man inside it, like in the song.”
    â€œWhich song?”
    â€œYour favorite song, about Little Boy Blue and the kitty cat and the daddy!”
    â€œWhat? Oh—you mean ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’?” He laughed. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear him, and she could picture that broad grin on his handsome face, flashing teeth beneath his mustache, and the way he’d throw his dark head back, laughing as though he didn’t have a care in the world.
    â€œHey, there, Diddle-Diddle.” He caught the back of the swing in his hands when she came sailing back toward him. “Guess what? You can’t go over the moon.”
    She giggled. “My name isn’t Diddle-Diddle!”
    â€œNo? I thought it was!” He wrapped his arms around her from behind and tickled her, making her giggle harder.
    Then he stopped. Still holding her fast against him, so that she could feel his mustache against her cheek and feel his heart beating