On day three of their week of preparations, Miriam was carrying an armful of vintage white plastic reindeer past the kitchen, thinking about ways to advertise “cut your own tree” packages to day tourists, when Mrs. Matthews stuck her head out the door.

“I have cookies.”

“Tell me about Joshua and Esther!” Miriam said, as she settled onto a chair. She avoided asking for updates on Blue.

Mr. Matthews swelled with pride from his perch on his favorite stool. “Well, you know, Joshua is with the philharmonic now.” He was a cellist. “And his son, Grant, is in the first grade.”

Miriam’s heart ached, for the loss of this easy camaraderie with the people who’d raised her, for never having met Mrs. Matthews’s grandson, for everything she’d missed while she had her head stuck up her own ass.

“And Esther is in charge of her own lab,” Mrs. Matthews chimed in.

“Gosh, all your children are such geniuses,” Miriam said, “and I just destroy antiques for a living.”

“Nonsense,” Mr. Matthews grumbled, crossing his arms. “You have the Bloomers.”

Miriam’s jaw dropped. “You know about the Bloomers?”

Mrs. Matthews smiled mischievously. “That little dustup last week in the comments of your Green Goddess fountain was really something, wasn’t it?”

They talked about the wild things the Bloomers did and said, and Miriam couldn’t get over that these warm, loving, wonderful people with three accomplished grown children took time out of their lives to follow her Instagram drama.

Being back at Carrigan’s in its holiday glory was both easier and much harder than she’d feared. She’d expected this trip to be awful because of the memories of her dad it would bring up, but his presence was nowhere in sight. Every day that passed without his poltergeist jumping out at her from corners, she had to ask herself why she’d been gone so long.

She thought she couldn’t stand to be here, and she’d been wrong, and she’d missed everything. She’d missed that her two oldest friends were in love.

She’d missed that Cass was dying.

The more being at Carrigan’s didn’t suddenly spring flashbacks on her, the more she started to let down her guard and enjoy being back. Everywhere she turned, though, Noelle was there, an impossible-to-ignore presence, a discordant note in her reclamation symphony. They hadn’t spoken since their fight in the work shed, moving silently around each other as much as was possible. Miriam was still determined to show Noelle she’d been misjudged, but she didn’t know how to do that if they weren’t speaking. Additionally, annoyingly, impossibly, that magnetic pull of attraction remained even while Miriam wanted to shriek in frustration every time they were in the same room.