The house was quiet and safe, and the repaired bracelet rested upstairs beside Poppy’s bed.

PART 21

Back home, ordinary life resumed.

Poppy had homework.

The washing machine started making an expensive noise.

The garden needed weeding, and sometimes my knees hurt badly enough that I stayed on the porch while Evelyn and Poppy tended the flowerbeds.

Nothing about our lives became magically perfect.

I still checked grocery prices.