“He—” She broke off when she heard the front door open, and the voices pour in. “I can’t explain now.” She pulled Avery out The Lobby door. “My guests are here. I’ll tell you later.”

“I’m off at five. I’ll get Clare and—”

“I can’t, not with guests here. And these ladies like to party.” But this took face-to-face, she thought. Texting or emailing wouldn’t cut it. “Tomorrow, after they check out.”

“Give me a clue,” Avery insisted.

“He thought I should move back to Georgetown, take my job back, and be his mistress.”

“Big buckets of shit!”

“At least. I can’t talk now.” She glanced over her shoulder.

“Do you have check-ins tomorrow?”

“No, actually, I don’t have guests tomorrow night.”

“Now you do. Clare and I are coming, and we’re staying. I’ll bring food for a roast-Jonathan’s-shriveled-little-balls party.”

“Yes.” The worst edge of her mood flew away as she threw her arms around Avery. “That’s exactly what I need. Just exactly. I need to go in.”

“You call if you need me before tomorrow.”

“I will, but I’m better—much.”

A woman could always count on her girl pals, Hope thought as she turned to the door. They never let you down.

But she hadn’t realized Ryder had the insight to understand she’d needed them.

Maybe she should have.

THAT NIGHT, WHEN the inn was quiet again—though she wondered if the echoes of six happily tipsy women playing Rock Band would swirl through the rooms for days—Hope settled down with her laptop.

Carolee had the breakfast shift, she thought, so she could sleep late if she needed to. She wanted to give the search for Lizzy’s Billy an hour before bed.

She remembered the sensation of a hand stroking her hair when she’d been low. Women friends didn’t let you down, she mused, and she supposed she and Lizzy were friends—of a sort.

She brought up the website of the Liberty House School. Her ancestor Catherine Darby—whom she’d discovered was Eliza Ford’s sister—their Lizzy’s sister—had founded it. Hope had attended it herself, as had her siblings, her mother, her grandmother.

Maybe that connection would bear fruit.

She found the email address for the head librarian and composed a letter. Maybe there was some sort of documentation, old letters, something. She’d already mined her family, but according to everyone she’d spoken to, all the papers relating to Catherine Ford Darby had been turned over to the school long ago.

“Just a name,” she murmured. “We just need a name.”

The sisters might have written each other when Eliza left New York for Maryland, for Billy. If not, surely Catherine had written a friend or a family member about her sister.