Fiona looked at him. What he said was absolutely true. She had had to take over for Marlin on occasion and she did suck at cooking but she was amazed that Al was clear-headed enough to have figured this out. Most of the time he looked as if he couldn’t think his way out of a paper bag. On the other hand, she had to remember that he did once write for the New York Times.

“All right,” she said. “So, can I tell Charlie she can have Ashley over on Thursday? Will you be free to take her home? Say around five-thirty? As if you’d just gotten home from work?”

“Do I look like I have a busy social calendar?” snapped Al, and slammed the door.

When Fiona got home she told Marlin about her conversation with Al.

“Really?” said Marlin in pleased tones as she put popovers in the oven and took out the last of the small roasts they had found in the freezer. “He can tell the difference between your meals and mine?”

“Marlin, a pig could tell the difference between your dinners and mine. And he wants cookies. He didn’t say how many but I say give him two dozen to be on the safe side. I don’t want any last-minute backing out on his part.”

“Sure. Cookies are easy. What kind?”

“Chocolate chip.”

“So boring,” said Marlin resignedly.

“These aren’t for experimentation, these cookies. These are a bribe so stick to the recipe.”

“Whatever,” said Marlin. “He’d be better off if I didn’t stick to the recipe. The ones I’ve been making for our lunches have been fantastic because I change things up. You know, I’m extremely talented at cooking, and very good at baking, but I think I have a kind of genius when it comes to cookies. Those dried cranberries and orange-peel bits made all the difference to the almond cookies.”

“They were great but make basic ones for Al. We don’t want him reneging on a macadamia nut technicality.”

“Philistine,” said Marlin, and returned to copying notes into the file she kept in Aunt Martha’s MacBook Air, which was now always open on the kitchen counter when she was playing with recipes so she could keep track of what she was adding or changing with exact measurements.

Then Fiona went to tell Charlie, who immediately called Ashley with the good news.

When Natasha, Marlin, and Fiona got to the school bus on Thursday they found a small blond girl standing next to Charlie. Charlie and the girl were yammering away at each other and hardly noticed them. The four sisters usually sat together at the back of the bus. But Charlie steered Ashley to seats away from her sisters. When Charlie didn’t need to cling to her sisters, Fiona always breathed a sigh of relief.

As soon as they got home, Ashley and Charlie ran into the meadow to play. Fiona took the garbage can to the street for Charlie and was busy with homework and paying bills and so it wasn’t until an hour had passed that she thought to check on them. It was then that her heart went immediately into her throat. Sitting in the middle of the fenced meadow looking perfectly happy was Billy Bear, sorting through a bag of garbage he had dragged there.