Noelle noticed, and didn’t want to, how naturally Hannah and Miriam fell into a lifelong secret language of sideways glances and half thoughts. She noticed Miriam and Mr. Matthews riffing goofs at dinner, and how the light from the Christmas trees caught in Miriam’s curls.

She noticed Miriam.

Noelle had been up late the last several nights scrolling Blum Again Vintage & Curios’ Instagram feed. She might have looked at every picture Miriam had ever posted, which was…many. If Miriam was going to disappear again, rather than stay and be part of the new Carrigan’s, Noelle wished she would get it over with. Noelle needed her equilibrium and sleep to return. Where was Miriam’s absentee fiancée, and why hadn’t the woman come to swoop her back South? If Miriam were hers, she would be there for her in her time of grief, standing by while she made an impossible life decision, acting as a guard for when Miriam didn’t feel up to dealing with Ziva.

But Miriam wasn’t Noelle’s, she was someone else’s. Noelle couldn’t start wanting to take care of her.

Everything about Miriam was a puzzle. Noelle knew parts of her. The girl Cass talked about glowingly, whom she was jealous of, and the swath of heartbreak that girl’s absence had left behind. She knew the sad, adorable elf who had shown up on her doorstep and drunk all her coffee. She knew the art she lived with every day and felt a connection with. And she knew the woman who, when asked about her mother, started to unravel. It was clear that somehow, Miriam leaving Carrigan’s was rooted in trauma; she hadn’t woken up one day and decided she didn’t care about her family. That didn’t undo the harm her absence had caused, but it forced Noelle to re-evaluate her initial judgment that Miriam was flighty and unreliable. Miriam was spooked and running from something. For whatever reason, Carrigan’s had gotten caught up in that.

She had to figure out the whole picture of Miriam Blum, whether she could trust Miriam to be a part of this place Noelle needed for her own survival—and if she could work with Miriam, without combusting in ill-advised lust.

Since the shit had hit the fan, hard enough that even her trees couldn’t talk her off the ledge, Noelle did the only thing she knew how to do: she went to a meeting.