But when she looked over at Adele to hear her answer, no one was there. Instead, nuzzling at her feet was the white terrier Princess, the pink satin bow tied into a tuft of hair right above her forehead, like a ponytail, sticking straight up.

Tess resisted the impulse to say something irritable to the white terrier. In truth, she was a little scared of Adele. Especially since she apparently could morph from being a perfectly adorable terrier named Princess to the seer named Adele. Tess did wonder what else she could do. And why she wouldn’t help her with Colin.

As Tess watched “the person who used to be Max” swinging on the old-fashioned swing hanging from the birch tree, she could hear him sing a song that sounded old-fashioned, as if it could be accompanied by a chorus, if there were one around, something about “angels dancing in the sky.”

It certainly wasn’t a song Tess had ever heard before.

Well, at least he was singing about angels. It could be worse, she reasoned. It could be a lot worse. . . .

Tess put her hand down and scratched the top of Princess’s head.

And there was another knock at the door. Tess answered it, without even thinking. It was the piano player, the gentleman she’d run into in the lobby. He was wearing a topcoat and a hat. “You haven’t seen—” but before he could finish Princess ran up to him, waving her tail. “I had a feeling you were going to check on the children.

“Thank you for looking after her, my dear,” he said to Tess, echoing the term of endearment that Adele had just used.

“Umm, you’re welcome,” said Tess who wasn’t quite sure how she should answer. “Any time.” She looked deeply into the terrier’s dark almond-colored eyes and Princess stared intensely back at her. It was strange. It was a look of understanding and, Tess didn’t want to add, sympathy, more like the way you look at someone when you want to encourage them or believe in them, as if you’re proud of them. It reminded her of the way her dad looked at her sometimes.

“You little muffin,” he said to Princess and picked the terrier up in his arms. “You know you’re not supposed to go running off by yourself.” And he walked away leaving Tess to wonder what exactly had just happened.

She locked the door from inside. And before she could even make it to her bedroom to try to decide what dress she should put on (she thought she should dress for dinner since they were eating in the dining room at the hotel and her parents were arriving which in some ways was an extremely comforting thought), there was another knock at the door. But this one was insistent, quite forceful in fact. Three knocks.

Tess walked back to the door and called out, “Who’s there?”