When she opened the front door, not only did she find Joel, but Finn as well, seated around the dining table with Myron’s daughters, happily stuffing fresh-baked banana-nut muffins into their mouths. Not bothering to swallow first, Joel exclaimed, “I found her!” and pointed to Finn.

Her sister looked up and smiled. “Hey, Zadie. Did you need something?”

Zadie did her best to hide her irritation. “Nope. I’m good,” she said, clipped, and took a seat at the table.

“How about a muffin?” Joel held one out to her, oblivious to Zadie’s indignation. She wordlessly accepted the muffin and began picking at its paper wrapping.

Myron whipped out of the kitchen carrying a pan of scrambled eggs. “Ah, you’re up.” He sat the pan on a trivet along with a spoon so people could help themselves. “I’ve got bacon going, too, and OJ in the fridge.”

“Dad always burns the bacon,” Juniper said matter-of-factly while plucking nuts from her muffin and dropping them onto her plate.

“I don’t burn it,” he contested. “I make it crispy.”

“Burnt.”

“Fine. You don’t have to eat it. And what’s this?” he said, nodding at her plate. “You don’t like nuts now?”

Juniper shook her head.

“Is there anything else I should know about? A tattoo perhaps?”

“Nope.”

“Okay,” he said with a mixture of amusement and exasperation, then turned to his guests. “How about you guys? You want some of my burnt bacon?”

All three nodded, Joel most emphatically.

“All right, then. Be right back,” he said, hustling back into the kitchen.

Zadie turned to her sister. She also seemed in better spirits than she’d been the day before. “How are you feeling?” she whispered.

“Great. Why?”

“You were kind of out of it yesterday.”

“I feel fine,” she said, shrugging and helping herself to a spoonful of eggs.

Either Zadie had imagined her sister’s distress the previous day, or Finn was gaslighting her. “Okay, if you say so,” she said, uneasy.

Finn appeared oblivious to her disquietude. “So we were thinking…” She looked around the room as though a consensus had been come to without Zadie’s knowledge. “We should probably stay here for another day or two. You know, in case something jogs my memory,” she said with an unnecessarily winking tone.

Zadie didn’t detect any recognition in Juniper or Hazel’s faces, but Rowan notably averted her eyes. She turned to her sister. “Can I talk to you outside for a sec?”

Finn grabbed another muffin and followed Zadie out onto the front porch. “What’s up?”

“You tell me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yesterday you could barely speak, and now you’re practically ready to move in. What happened?”

“Nothing,” Finn insisted.

Zadie shot her a skeptical look. “You had an echo, didn’t you?”

“No … Okay, yes,” she whispered. “But I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“Promised who?”

“Rowan.”