By the time I woke up, Mark was already downstairs. I heard Jack and Emily laughing—not fighting, for once—and smelled the heavenly scent of coffee. I padded down, disoriented when I saw that it was after 9:00 a.m. I found the kids in the kitchen, happily digging into Froot Loops (a breakfast I normally relegated to the weekends, but I was willing to let it slide for those extra minutes of sleep), and a full pot of coffee on the counter.

Mark entered the kitchen, dressed for work with his phone in his hand.

“Did you get some sleep? You were tossing and turning all night,” he said as he poured coffee into a travel mug and then pulled out a mug and poured me some.

“I did. Thanks for getting up with the kids. Shouldn’t you be on your way by now?” I said gratefully as I took a small sip.

“I moved some things around.” He looked at me sympathetically, I’m sure thinking, You don’t look so good.

“Thanks.” I rubbed my forehead and took another sip of coffee.

“Any communication from Liz?” he said.

I shook my head. “Nothing.” I gestured to the supernatural library books I’d stacked in a corner of the kitchen after I got home last night. “Although I convinced Jess and Melissa to do some research last night.”

His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Melissa went along with that?”

I waved my palm in the air. “Barely. Begrudgingly. And Jess never says no to anything.”

He walked over and gave me a kiss on top of my head. “You need a break. Give it time. I’m sure Liz will snap out of it, and you all will be back to being friends.”

I didn’t say anything, instead closing my eyes and wishing with every part of my being that would be true.

Magical thinking, as it turned out.

—

I sent the kids outside after breakfast, still in their pajamas, to collect caterpillars. Well, I had suggested ladybugs until Emily reminded me that we had a lot of Asian ladybugs around our house, the kind that were yellow and bit. So I suggested they find caterpillars, even though we had seen them only once in the past three years.

I walked outside on the front porch, coffee cup in hand, and glanced around the neighborhood. All the other kids were beginning to break free from their houses, a collective roar of shrieks and shouts that formed one giant child swarm. I looked to my right, at Jess’s house, just as she emerged onto her front porch. She saw me and jogged over, still wearing the tank top and pajama shorts that she’d slept in.

“Howdy, friend,” she said. She stopped suddenly, midjog, in my front yard. “Oh, maybe I shouldn’t say ‘howdy.’ Wasn’t the name of the demon in The Exorcist Captain Howdy?”