Effy considered pointing out that the fact that Kate's mother cared at all was something else altogether, something that Effy hadn't known in her life until her family had already started crumbling at the edges, her father breaking off and away to seek a life without humiliation, Tony recovering from an accident and gradually taking the experience as greater impetus to set out in the world, and Anthea herself only returning once it was clear that Effy couldn't survive on her own at all. But it seemed so unnecessarily bleak, she thought to herself. Whatever her family did back home had a minimal effect on her life on the island.

"My mom and I ran 'way from the boys once," she decided to share instead, ignoring the thought that Tony and her father had run away long before that trip. "Ran to Italy for a summer. It was nice. Came back and it was like... nothing moved. Running away by yourself's different. You come back, and then nothing's the same."