The riverfront park was still the most populous place—her old haunt, where children wobbled on training wheels and flabby guys played volleyball on rectangles of orange sand. The water twitched with motor boats and jet skis. She rode north to Shorewood Park and the water-ski jump, then south to the YMCA, her stomach seizing each time she approached it because she half expected to see Michael West sitting cross-legged by the river. His arm in a sling. She craved this—to begin the story again, like re-entering a dream. But it wouldn’t be the same. Something had shifted, broken in her. When she thought of herself a year ago she remembered a girl flush with outsized hopes, a girl who believed the world had made secret arrangements in her favor. Charlotte hated her.