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Frowning, Sonya looked over as they stopped on the second floor. “How do you know that?”

“We have lots of them in Louisiana, Son.”

“True. I guess a creek.”

“Or a brook.”

“I likebrook. I’m saying brook. Yoda chased a squirrel over this branch over the brook. But he came back. It was probably half a minute, but it seemed longer. I need a compass.”

“At least. Next time, you tell me you’re walking in the woods. If I can’t go with you, I’ll know where you are.”

“Deal. What are you wearing to dinner?”

“Haven’t decided.”

“I bet Molly has.”

They went into Cleo’s room together. On the bed lay a dress, belted at the waist, in a coppery color. With it lay a lacy black sweater.

“Nice choice,” Sonya decided.

“I have to agree. Thanks, Molly.”

Sonya continued to her own room and found her navy, square-necked dress paired with her cream-colored, waist-length suede jacket.

“I don’t think I’ve ever put those two pieces together. I like it. Thanks, Molly.”

Deciding she’d gotten used to having a fashion consultant, among other things, Sonya took her time.

She thought of all that had happened since she’d dressed for dinner with Trey—and he’d had to cancel.

She’d walked through the mirror, Owen beside her. She’d seen Lisbeth Poole die at her own wedding reception. Watched Hester Dobbs glide through, a ghost among ghosts, to take Lisbeth’s ring.

And she’d pulled herself into the normal so she and Cleo could make dinner for the men who’d stood with them, stood by them. Trey had watched Dobbs leap to her death off the seawall.

Cleo found Lisbeth’s portrait—what was surely the third in a series. Now it hung in the music room.

They’d withstood Dobbs’s three a.m. tantrum—it felt good to think of them as tantrums—then watched her, as Trey had, leap from the seawall.

Through it all, she thought, as she added earrings, they’d worked, and laughed, and lived.

And she’d taken a walk in the woods with her dog.

Her life, Sonya reflected, had grown so much richer, so much fuller since her move to Maine and the manor.

Though she’d spent, excepting the past few months, her whole life in Boston, she felt her roots digging deep into the rocky coast of Maine.

She missed the easy access to her mother, and suspected she always would. But the rest? No, she’d left that part of her life behind.

Stepping back, she did a half turn in the mirror. Then slid into her shoes, and with Yoda trailing behind, walked down the hall. She peeked into Cleo’s room.

“I’m nearly there!” Cleo called out. “I got distracted. A text from Lucy Cabot about a cat. I’m going to go see it—her, it’s a girl cat—tomorrow when I go into town for supplies.”

After perfecting her lipstick, Cleo stepped out of the bathroom and looked at Yoda.

“If she’s my cat, and I bring her home, you have to be sweet to her.”

“Lucy wouldn’t have called you if the cat didn’t get along withdogs. And Yoda’s already been field-tested with cats. This could be fun.”