Mrs. Matthews handed her a ball of dough, and they worked for a few moments in silence, Miriam letting herself get back into the rhythm of something she’d known how to do all her life.

“I know you’re just trying to help me feel useful,” she told Mrs. Matthews. “And I appreciate it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was using you for labor while also looking for excuses to hang out with you.” Mrs. Matthews winked at her. “Noelle and Hannah are very similar, you know.”

Miriam knew better than to interrupt.

“It’s what drew them together when Noelle first moved here. They were two peas in a pod who had finally found each other. Hannah has been searching all her life for what Anne Shirley called a kindred spirit. She was looking for her Diana.”

“I always thought that was Levi,” Miriam murmured.

Mrs. Matthews chuckled. “He was and he wasn’t. You may remember that as a child, he was…intense and capricious. Hannah likes things to be rock solid.”

As children, Miriam had seen Hannah’s loving parents, her close relationships with the Rosensteins and Blue, and envied all the love in Hannah’s life. She hadn’t realized her cousin was lonely, too. Maybe hating traveling wasn’t the only reason she wanted to stay at Carrigan’s so desperately.

“But, you know, she’s bossy. She likes to be in charge of everything. She needed someone as strong willed and territorial as she was. She and Noelle, they fit. Noelle took the farm, Hannah took the inn, and neither of them has ever had to cede any territory. It’s been worse since Levi left, because work has been the only thing keeping her from drowning some days.”

“I’m not asking Hannah to give up any of her work,” Miriam insisted, finally seeing Mrs. Matthews’s point. “I am not capable of doing what she does, and I would hate it.”

She pounded the dough harder than she ought, which earned her a reproving look.