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John Kelly comes back to the table and gives me a fatherly hug that nearly makes me cry. After that, I finally start to relax. When Chelsea arrives, she lets me hold baby Imogen until the food comes. I order eggs Benedict, and we talk about everything from Imogen’s sleep schedule to Chester, who I checked on this morning. He seems to be doing better than the last time we saw him. He was out on his new porch when I arrived, throwing scraps at the chickens. He even gave me a grin.

“No one knows much about him,” John says, leaning back and sipping his coffee. “Not even Griffin.”

I glance between the sisters, but none of them says anything, and I realize Griffin hasn’t made his friendship with Chester known. Even though it seems to me like he holds his cards close to his chest, he tells me so much more.

“Does Chester ever talk about his grandfather?” John asks.

“Not much. Why?”

“He was always a bit of a mystery to us growing up here. He rarely came into town, refused to go on the power grid when they strung lines up that way. People say he guarded his place with a shotgun, but my pop did some work for him and said he wasn’t mean so much as…lonely.”

I feel a sudden affinity for the old man.

“You never told us this,” Cass says.

He shrugs. “Haven’t thought about Joseph Brown in years. I always thought he must have a sad story, to live up there alone. No one at his funeral but Chester, and he’d only been living with him a few years when he passed.”

I frown. “I thought Chester grew up in that house.”

“I suppose we wouldn’t have seen much of him if his grandfather kept him from town.”

I try to remember what Griffin told me about the timing of Chester’s history. But just thinking about Griffin has me feeling that strange emptiness inside again.

“Sasha?” Chelsea asks.

I blink. They’ve asked me a question.

“Sorry,” I say. “I’m a little distracted.”

“It’s hard on us when Griffin takes off without telling any of us,” Chelsea says softly. “Must be really hard on you—he does tell you he’s going, doesn’t he?”

I swallow down the dryness in my throat. “Yes. He tells me.” Just not where. And for what.

This would be what life with Griffin would be like if this were real. Him constantly leaving, not telling anyone where he’s gone. Not even me, the person he’s supposedly been telling everything.

“Well, you’ve got us,” Cass says after a moment. “Me, specifically. We’re going to have an amazing time over the next few days, I promise.”

I smile, grateful for her kindness, for all of their kindness, and for taking me in like this.

“But I do want to know about Eleanor,” John says. “Any movement on that front?”

I brighten at the change of subject, though I don’t have much more information for him.

“Nora gave me all the census records from around that time,” I say, “and I’ve narrowed down the results a little, but there are still so many to go through.”

John nods, looking like he’s trying to hide his disappointment.

My stomach does a roll. Nora and Jude made leaps and bounds, and I haven’t done anything yet except go through information they already found. For them it’s family business—part of their legacy. For me it’s just my own curiosity.

Maybe it was a terrible idea to jump into this search. Not when I’m not really a part of this family.

John must see the embarrassment on my face, because he smiles. “I’m just glad to see someone picking up the thread while Nora and Jude are waylaid by life.”

Chelsea nods. “Yeah, none of us have dedicated any time to the project recently either. We all kind of gave up when it got hard. You’re awesome for wanting to keep it going.”

“To be honest,” Cass says, “I wasn’t much of a fan of digging around when everyone started getting into it. Besides being nonsense, the ghost rumors were bad for business. But since Nora’s documentary came out, people are more interested in the story of the people behind the ridiculous rumors.”

I know they’re saying all this to make me feel better. But it works, at least a little.