Rosamund learned that Gemma would not eat toast unless it was cut into triangles, and then that the triangles had to be small, and then that Gemma had invented an elaborate private rule about which triangle was eaten first, and Rosamund never once mentioned any of this to anyone, because a six-year-old’s rules are her own business.

She learned that Lorelai got quiet before she got upset, not after, and that the quiet was the part you had to catch.

She learned that on October the ninth, both girls would be strange all day, and that the correct response was not to talk about it but to make the cinnamon bread their mother used to make and leave it on the counter without ceremony.

She did not tell Chadworth about the cinnamon bread either.