She got up on a chair to reach the good cocoa on the highest shelf of the cupboard and then heated it on the stove. She wanted to ask a million questions, but she waited until she had closed Ben’s fingers around the mug of cocoa.

“All right. Uncle Ben. Why don’t you tell us what’s happened since the eclipse?” Eleanor said gently.

Ben took a long, loud slurp of cocoa, wiped his lips with his hand (making Otto grimace), and began. “We were going outside to look at the eclipse. Jack ran outside. Then there was this woman there. She had these glittering things floating around her.”

“Wander,” Eleanor said.

He shrugged. “She grabbed Jack’s hand and suddenly there was this hole in the air, and they jumped through. Then everything got dark. I heard Jenny say my name, but when I turned around, she was just . . . gone. They both were.” A sob rose in his chest. He swallowed it down. “I was frantic. Calling their names. Running all over the place. It took me a while to realize that the eclipse . . . it wasn’t going away. And you were gone, too. After that, things got strange.”

“They weren’t already?” Otto muttered.

Ben took another swig of cocoa. “Jenny and Naomi weren’t the only ones missing. A whole bunch of people were. Only they weren’t just missing. All their things were gone, too. Naomi’s room is completely empty. Jenny’s paintings are gone. It’s the same all over town. They’re still in photographs, but all other evidence that they ever existed in the first place has been wiped. And then people that shouldn’t be here started showing up.”

“You said the January Society was here,” Eleanor said. The January Society had been sucked into the gray world on Halloween. She looked over at Pip. Pip’s mother had been part of the January Society—she’d been in charge of it. And she’d tried to give them to Mr. January on Halloween. Did this mean she was back? Pip must be frantic. But her expression was simply focused and curious.

Ben nodded. “They work for the mayor. This weird guy came out of the gray and said that he was here to save us. But if you ask me, he doesn’t know what’s going on any better than the rest of us.” He stared down into his cup, a foam of chocolatey milk striping his mustache. “But you’re back. So maybe everyone else will come back, too. Maybe all of this will end.”

“He’s not forgetting,” Pip noted, staring intently at Ben.

“I guess this is just too big to forget,” Eleanor said.

“Sometimes it gets hard to think,” Ben confessed. He put a hand to his head, wagging it side to side. “Like everything gets scrambled, and you have to remember all over again. But you get used to it.”