The atmosphere couldn’t have been more perfectly aligned with my mood. But after brooding over the menu, I was determined to at least pretend that everything was normal.

“So . . .” I started, staring down at the heaping plates of fried, unrecognizable bits of seafood that the waitress had dropped onto our table. “You’re both still coming over for New Year’s Eve, right? Wild night at the Dietrichs’?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jesse said, squinting at the misshapen lump of batter he’d just speared on his fork.

“Actually . . .” Hannah’s voice faded out as she bit down on her straw. “I wasn’t going to mention anything until I was absolutely certain, but I just found out before we met up today that Lauren and the baby are definitely going to be staying over that night, so my parents want me to be at home. I’m sorry, Meen. I feel bad, and trust me, it’s not really my dream New Year’s either. Quite a difference from Nate’s awesome party last year.” She cringed as soon as she mentioned Nate, her cheeks reddening as she looked back down at her soda. “Anyway, I’ve just been so busy lately with everything, I haven’t spent much time with little Ella. Or Lauren, for that matter. Don’t be mad at me?”

“Of course I’m not mad,” I said, and I was relieved to realize that I meant it. And I was also relieved to realize that the sound of Nate’s name no longer pummeled me in the gut just to hear it. Progress. “Now if you were jumping ship for a kegger at Kyle Baker’s house . . . then I might hold a grudge. But it’s family. It’s Ella. You have my blessing.”

“So it’s just you and me then, Meen?” Jesse asked.

I bit into a big piece of what I assumed was fried scallop to hide my nervous grin. “Looks that way. Oh, and there’s Gracie, who I’m sure will at least pretend she’s going to stay up until midnight. My parents will be out of the house for some party with a few of my dad’s coworkers. They’re clearly cooler than we are.” So I would be alone with Jesse, or practically alone at least, on New Year’s Eve. But it was just like any other night, only with a ball dropping on the TV screen and some fake champagne. No big deal, right? I swallowed and smiled at him from across the table.

“That’s you, isn’t it?” a rough voice croaked from the aisle just behind me. I jerked my head back, startled, to see that the tiny, birdlike old man had gotten up and was now standing just inches away from me, his news-paper clenched in his fist and dangling in front of my face. “That’s you, that’s both of you, isn’t it? Together like that in front of church on Christmas Eve. A church! A church of all places to be going about your shameful business . . .”

The tips of my ears and my cheeks were scorching hot, and it took every ounce of focus I had left to keep the last bite of fish batter down my throat.

“Yes,” Jesse said from across the table, not missing a beat. He stared the old man straight in the eyes. “Yes, that is us. Thank you for saying hello. Now, if you wouldn’t mind leaving us alone, we were having a private conversation.”

“It’s not right,” the man spit out, his thin, withered lips twisting, adding to the many folds and wrinkles already etched across his leathery brown face. He had spent too many hours under the sun, out on his boat, deep-sea fishing and sailing away the weekends.

“I tell you, you’re both playing with the Devil, and I have no doubts that you’ll both come out burnt for it.” He turned to Hannah then, ticking a knobby finger in her face. “And I don’t know who you are, but get away. Get away from these two before it’s too late for you, too.”

“We’re leaving,” Jesse said, shoving back against the booth as he rushed to his feet. “Now.” He reached into his pocket and tossed a few bills onto the table.

I had gotten used to the kids at school talking about me, had gotten used to the website posts and even the unanswered calls that still somehow came through, even with our new number. But a stranger yelling accusations in my face?

No. I would never get used to that.

I was shaking by the time I had my jacket and purse in my hands, and Jesse looped his arm around my back as the three of us walked to the door. The old man was still calling out behind us, and I couldn’t stop myself from glancing back one last time. The waitress was trying to block him from me, it seemed, her hands waving in front of his face to make him shut up. But the waitress looked smaller, her hair looked whiter . . . Iris.

I sucked in my breath and closed my eyes to stop the dizzy feeling that washed over me. And sure enough, as soon as I opened them again, Iris was gone, the tired-looking waitress in her place. But the waitress was still doing her best to silence the man, shooing him away to get his jacket and leave her restaurant.

“He doesn’t know you, Mina,” Jesse said, pulling me out into the frigid night air. “He’s a crazy, lonely old man.”

I nodded, still trying to shake Iris out of my mind. No. She hadn’t been a hallucination. I had to trust myself. But even so, she seemed to be appearing more and more often, which terrified me. What if Iris was trying to tell me something? What if I was missing something important that connected all these moments? I was torn between wanting to tell Jesse and Hannah and not wanting to worry them. I worried them enough already without these Iris sightings tacked on to the list.

“He’s right,” Hannah said, wrapping an arm around me. “You can’t let that awful old man bother you.”

Of course the old man had bothered me. Of course I was bothered that a total stranger hated me, a stranger who probably had grandkids who called him Pappy and visited him every summer for boat rides and sand castles and double scoop ice cream cones.

His judgment made me want to prove myself somehow, to march back in there and convince him that I wasn’t the blackhearted heathen he thought I was.

“Your video,” I said, gasping as I took a deep breath of the frosty air. “People need to see me. They need to really see me. We have to finish it and get it out there. Soon. But do you . . . do you think it’ll even work? Will it make any kind of difference?”

“I hope so,” he answered, tilting his head against mine so that his thick curls brushed along the top of my forehead. “I really do.”

He talked about the project for much of the ride home—the footage he was using, the editing finished and still to be done, the music I might want to add, where and how to post it, any people or ideas or moments we could have forgotten to include. Hannah gave good answers, and I chimed in when I had to. But for the most part I was more caught up in the reflection of my face in the passenger-side window, the faint outlines of my lips, my nose, my windblown hair, competing for visibility against the dark blur of shapes in the passing scenery outside.

I couldn’t look away from that girl in the window. How could the rest of the world see someone so different from who I saw? How could a face, a body, a person—an entire life—become so distorted and grotesque in other peoples’ eyes?

We passed a brightly lit rest stop, and my face blinked out of sight, the reflection lost in the yellow glow of restaurant signs and street lamps. I disappeared, just like that. Just that easily.

Maybe, I thought, the realization crashing with a sickening thud to my stomach—maybe that really was the only solution. The best way to move on for everyone involved.

I would disappear, slip off the radar. I would stop weighing down my friends and my family, all the people who were the most loyal to me—all the people who least deserved this kind of punishment. I would run away, find a new place, make a new name. And I would be just like any other single mom trying to make it work.

I couldn’t keep doing this to all of them, and I wouldn’t. If the video did nothing, if the pressure and the scrutiny kept getting worse and worse . . .