“Am I allowed to ask where Lily went?” Sadie-Grace asked me.

I was getting ready to tell her that I didn’t know, and then I saw Lily’s car. I wondered if she’d planned, when she left, to come here, to meet Ellen.

I wondered if Lily had even realized this was where she was coming.

This time, there was no welcoming committee. No guns. Sadie-Grace and I stood on the front porch of the house where we’d met Ellen—the house where Ellen’s granddaughter Beth had given birth to baby Audie.

The bell was cracked and broken, so I lifted my hand to knock.

The girl who answered the door couldn’t have been older than eleven or so. Her hair was tangled, her ponytail lopsided. The dirt on her knees made me think that she’d worked for every tangle and knocked the ponytail off center on purpose.

“We’re looking for . . .” I was going to say that we were looking for Ellen, but before I could get that out, I caught sight of Lily. She was standing just outside what I assumed was the kitchen. After a second or two, she turned toward us.

If she was surprised to see me there, she didn’t show it.

“You followed me?” There was a flicker of discernible emotion in her eyes, like I’d told her she didn’t get to leave me, and she’d responded, As of right now, I get to do whatever the hell I want.

“I had no idea you’d be here,” I said.

Lily didn’t enlighten me as to why she’d come. Instead, she turned back toward the kitchen. “You have guests,” she called.

I heard a harrumph. The sound of a chair scraping against linoleum floor came next, and a few seconds later, my grandmother’s twin stepped into the hallway behind Lily.

“Funny,” she said, in a tone that suggested it really wasn’t. “I don’t remember inviting you.” She swiveled her head pointedly toward Lily. “Any of you.”

“Thank you,” Lily told her, sounding more like herself than she had in an age. “For the conversation.”

What conversation?

Ellen didn’t reply—but she didn’t harrumph again, either.

Lily turned back to us. Wordlessly, she walked down to the doorway to stand beside the little girl. “This is Makayla,” she told us. “She’s our second cousin.”

“That means our mamas are cousins,” Makayla informed me.

Ellen has six children, I thought. Who knows how many children they have.

“It was nice to meet you,” Lily told Makayla, with all the pomp and circumstance of someone thanking the queen for her hospitality. “But I think it’s time for me to go.”

Lily flicked her gaze from me to Sadie-Grace. “Did you hear from the White Gloves?”