Dear Diary,

First things first: sitting on my desk, in front of my very own eyes, are the shoes of Jane the Bald! And tomorrow I am going to take them to Berks Dry Cleaner’s and see what they can do. They are stained with egg yolk from September 10, 1544. That was the date of my most recent visit to England. When I got back and carefully made my way around the shattered glass of the greenhouse, it was still October 31. I hadn’t looked at the clock when I left, but I think it was around 9:30 when I got back after trick-or-treating. As soon as I was back, I ran upstairs to Shirley’s room and told her about the broken window.

But the point here is that I was gone to Greenwich for about three minutes tops tonight. The first time I was at Greenwich, when I met the prince, I was whisked back here for a few days, yet nobody from that old world seemed to miss me at all.

My question now is, how can I control my comings and goings? I am at time’s whimsy. I feel as if I am like a ball of yarn a cat might play with—but not September! I trust her. She is the least whimsical creature I know. What was the word Mom always used? “Capricious.” Mercurial, capricious. My mother’s vocabulary seems to have been enriched by crazy people buying and selling houses.

Rose sighed and closed the diary, her eyes shut tight. Would she ever stop missing her mom? Did she want to stop missing her mom? She had better get some sleep. Tomorrow was a math test. Undoubtedly there would be some geometry on it. Her conversation with the Princess Elizabeth drifted back to her.

“Isosceles triangle, perhaps?”

“Two equal sides.”

“An equilateral triangle?”

“All sides equal.”

Soon she was fast asleep.

“Well, that’s a miserable, rotten trick.” Rosalinda’s voice scalded the air the next morning as Rose entered the sunroom, or as her gran called it, the “conservatory,” where breakfast was served. It was a circular, pleasant room with tin-lined troughs for plants beneath every windowsill. This was where her grandmother proudly displayed her favorites from the greenhouse when they were in full bloom. The air now swirled with the summer scent of sweet peas. Gran took enormous delight in these “tricks” of the season as she called them. The troughs were spilling with the delicate little blossoms in summer colors of pale pink, lavender, and white. Rosalinda smiled sweetly toward an especially robust explosion in one trough as the sun streamed through the arched window.

“Pastels! Such a relief. Far too much orange this time of year. By the way, is Calvin able to fix the broken glass?”