“I heard you walk out here. Is everything okay? Did you and Sam have a fight or something?” she asks.

“What? No. Why?”

“All I know is he’s crying on the couch downstairs and he won’t talk to me.”

I pause before telling her. “I finally read the letter Henri left behind. There’s some stuff about Sam he and I haven’t told you. It’s about his dad.”

“What about his dad? Everything okay?”

I turn my body so our knees touch. “Listen. When I met Sam in school he was pretty obsessed with the disappearance of his dad, who just didn’t come home from the grocery store one day. They found his truck and his glasses on the ground next to the truck. You know those glasses that you see him carrying around all the time?”

Six turns to look inside the back door. “Wait. Those are his dad’s?”

“Yeah. And so the deal is that Sam is pretty convinced he was abducted by aliens, which I always thought was crazy; but I, I don’t know, I let him go on believing it because who am I to crush the dude’s hope of finding his dad again? I was waiting for Sam to tell you all this, but I just read Henri’s letter, and you wouldn’t believe what was in there.”

“What?”

I tell her everything, about Sam’s dad being a Loric ally who met Henri and me when the ship landed, why Henri moved us to Paradise.

Six slides off the top of the picnic table and lands awkwardly on the bench. “That is just so totally random that Sam is here. In there.”

“I don’t think it is. I mean, think about it. It just so happens that of all the people in Paradise I’m drawn to for a best friend, it happens to be Sam? I think we were destined to meet.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Pretty cool that his dad helped us that night, right?”

“The coolest. Remember when he said he had these feelings growing inside him about being with us?”

I do. “But here’s the thing. In Henri’s letter he says that Sam’s dad actually was abducted, or maybe even killed, by the Mogadorians.”

We sit in silence watching the sun slowly come up over the horizon. Bernie Kosar jogs out of the forest and rolls onto his back to have his belly rubbed. “Hey there, Hadley.” He flips onto his feet instantly when I say it, tilting his beagle head. “Yeah,” I say, jumping down to scratch his chin with both hands. “I know.” Sam walks out. His eyes are red. He sits next to Six on the bench.

“Hi, Hadley,” Sam says to Bernie Kosar. BK barks in response and licks his hands.

“Hadley?” Six asks.

The dog barks again in approval.

“I always knew it,” Sam says. “Always. From the day he disappeared.”