“Hi! I’m so sorry I’m late. My friend said there was this amazing yoga group?” She approached Jasper and deployed her most charming smile.

“Your friend?” Jasper paused on the front step, blocking Esther’s access.

“Yeah—shall I just go in? You look kind of busy . . .”

McGraw had the back doors of the van open and chose that moment to call to Jasper, “It’s quite a sizeable delivery. Not sure we can get it through the front there. Do you have another entrance?”

“I—er—” Jasper looked from Esther to the van and back, his adorable freckled face screwed up in indecision. “Sure. I guess, go through to the kitchen. Elise can help you,” he told Esther.

Although they had downloaded a floor plan from Right-move from when Zoise HQ had been on the market three years earlier, Esther took a second to match the blueprint in her brain to her surroundings. Stairs to the right, sitting room to the left—kitchen straight ahead, where she would find . . .

“Er, hello?” A young woman, petite and perfectly turned out in Lululemon leggings and a flowing T-shirt dress, set a tray of cookies down on the kitchen table and fixed Esther with an appraising look. “Have we met?”

“I don’t think so,” Esther said, adopting an entirely unnecessary American accent. “How y’all doing? I’m Fenella.”

She held her hand out and beamed enthusiastically as the young woman took it.

“I’m Elise.”

“What a cute name!” Esther ambushed her with a hug. Elise smelled like the cookies she’d been baking. “Now, can y’all tell me where I’m supposed to be going?”

“Where’s Jasper? He usually introduces the new initiates.”

“You mean that handsome young man who let me in?” Her accent had melded into something from the Deep South. Or rather, Esther’s approximation of such an accent. Fanning herself seemed entirely in keeping when she said, “My, my, what a fine specimen. There were some gentlemen here with a delivery—he told me to come on in.”

“Yes. Right, well . . .” Esther’s arrival had flustered her, and it took a moment for Elise to remember what she’d been in the middle of doing. On the table was a tray of expensive-looking cups—stoneware gray with colorful enamel rims. No handles. “If you could take this tray of tea and cookies down with you, I’m sure Jasper will be along shortly.”

“Aren’t you comin’?”

“No.” Elise dusted crumbs off her leggings. “I’ve things to do. The session started ten minutes ago. I’m sure Jasper can catch you up, but if you could leave your mobile phone in the bowl . . . ?” She gestured to a bowl in the center of the table—a cheerful Buddha smiling down on a bounty of mobile phones. “Here at the Brethren of Zoise we find a complete disengagement from the material world really helps you get into the zone.”