There was a lot of space, and then on the bottom were the words:

I figured it out. But do I have the courage? I don’t know.

Anna drove up with pizza and water bottles—and when Charles kissed her mouth in thanks, she tasted like bubble gum. He pulled back and frowned at her.

“Bubble gum?”

She laughed. “While the pizza was cooking, I bought a snow cone.” She gave Charles a smile. “But the reason I went there was to tell Zander I knew why his song sounded familiar.”

They sat down at the dining table—it was handy—and ate.

“What song?” asked Tag.

“When I talked to Zander yesterday, he was playing guitar,” she explained around a bite of hot pizza. “He was noodling around on a piece that sounded familiar to me—and he didn’t know what it was, either, just something he was working on. You know how it is when you can’t quite remember a song …”

Tag shook his head.

“And you know what it is now?” asked Charles. He was glad that the shadow of telling Dr. Connors what she was pregnant with had left Anna, even if he’d rather it hadn’t been the pretty boy selling snow cones who’d accomplished that.

She laughed. “It is such a relief. It was the chord progression: D major, A major, B minor, F sharp minor …” She raised her eyebrows.

He closed his eyes and “heard” the progression in his head. “Pachelbel’s Canon, among other songs,” he said.

“And a dozen other songs at least,” she agreed. To Tag she said, “It’s one of those chord progressions that just sounds good—so it was stolen by a whole bunch of pop musicians. I have no idea what song Zander’s mother sang to him—but I know Pachelbel.” She mimicked playing the cello.

“Why didn’t you pick it up sooner?” asked Tag. “It’s mainly a cello piece, right?”

“For sure,” she said. She shook her head. “I have no idea why I couldn’t figure it out.” She looked at the unit and asked, “Are you going to be able to get all the way through that before the rain hits?”

Charles said “Yes” and Tag said “No” at the same time.

“What he means,” said Tag, “is that we aren’t going to keep going through it. We’re putting it all back. There’s too much to put in the SUV. We found a cache of historical diaries written by the Green family of witches. They aren’t magic per se, but we aren’t leaving them for anyone. We’ll get a crew in here to clear out the whole unit—take ’em home and sort them out there.”