“Jewelry, too.” Her hand drifted up to touch the hollow in her collarbone, where the gold pendant Granny had given her should have sat. “But I don’t have much of that—just a necklace and a watch. Everyone else seems to have so much more stuff than I do. When I couldn’t give any more, they asked if I’d give myself.”

“What? Like a sex thing?!”

“No!” Daisy flushed red from neck to hairline. “Just staying here for a few days to help around the house.”

“You mean to do all the grunt work for them?” Esther looked outraged.

Daisy shrugged and caught Susan looking at her, that razorlike perception slicing through the remaining fog of the space bakes and seeing right into her heart.

“We missed you, Daisy. And not just because neither of us knows how to use the pizza setting on the microwave.” She laid a hand on Daisy’s arm. “You know that, don’t you?”

The way Susan was looking at her, the penitent little gasp that escaped Esther’s lips, Daisy wondered how she’d ever doubted it.

Susan rose, fists planted on her hips, head turned so that her purposeful profile was silhouetted against the glow of the studio’s dim lighting. “Now. Let’s reclaim your things and burn this place to the ground.”

“Metaphorically!” Esther clarified.

Back inside, Daisy transferred Baby Gordon from his temporary nest in one of the many Buddha bowls to the breast pocket of her robe. That done, she showed her friends the enormous storage closet in a corner of the studio.

“There’s hardly anything in here,” Esther said blankly as the three of them stared at a few shelves of Blu-rays and odd little knickknacks—a blender, a funky little digital clock, and some books. No jewelry—nothing much at all, in fact.

“Ooh, the new Dan Brown!” Esther reached in to pick it up and flipped through it. “Wonder if it’s any good . . .”

“Almost certainly not,” Susan murmured.

“It’s signed!” she squeaked.

“And yet remains without value. Put it back.”

Susan stood back to study the half-filled shelves. They should have been filled to bursting with sacrificial offerings, but if they weren’t here . . .

“Daisy, are there any places Elise has warned you away from?”

“Well, not exactly . . .” She glanced up at the ceiling. “But she did make a lot of jokes about how awful Jasper’s bedroom was—that I didn’t need to worry about cleaning it unless I had a hazmat suit handy.”

“So, a room like Susan’s?” Esther put in.

As the two of them shared a joke at Susan’s expense, Susan smiled, thinking how easily manipulated fastidious people were into steering clear of any kind of mess. These two would never look inside her secret pizza box.

“If they’re hiding anything, that’s where we’ll find it. Let’s . . .”