Jane kept reliving that night. After her tryst with Alec, Jane had been trying to creep undetected through the living room and to her porch bed. Then it occurred to her that everyone knew she had gone over to Alec's, and it would be strange if they didn't hear her come back. So she stomped her foot and cried out.

"Hello, everyone!"

Rosalind and Batty poked their heads out of Rosalind's room where they had been watching a movie on Batty's laptop.

"Oh hi," Batty said.

"Hi, indeed," Jane had said.

Then with a smile and a toss of her rumpled hair, she had dashed over to the screen porch. Once safely on her own bed, she had laughed out loud with pure adrenaline. She had been so scared that Jeffrey would wander in while she padded down the steps from Alec's room in her bare feet. That would happen if it were a novel, she thought to herself. Then she jotted the note down.

Now, a full day and night later, Jane was no less excited by the secret. It was more than just a romantic venture. She had cracked the code. She had tapped into what made her a good writer in the first place. She was willing to experience life at its radical highs and lows. And its most extreme instances. She had so much to write about now. Ideas were pouring out of her. She couldn't stop writing about Rosalind and her other sisters, but she was also having a million other little thoughts and storylines.

She was sitting at the table and eating Rosalind's breakfast of eggs and bacon, and she couldn't stop writing in her notebook, even when Batty begged her to stop spilling eggs on the floor.

"I don't know what is with you guys," Batty muttered.

Jane glanced up to see that Skye was also in a daze. She had her chin propped in her hand and was gazing into space with a soft smile on her lips. Her whole life, Jane had thought Skye's eyes would be beautiful and approachable if Skye would only stop glaring out of them, and there Skye was, lost in some secret wondrous place and looking, truth be told, like a princess in a storybook.

"I know what's with them," Rosalind said as she danced over to the table with a mischievous grin.

Jane sucked in her breath and stared hard at her cold eggs. This was bad. Very bad. She was caught. Skye remained in some sort of dreamland, but this bombshell would shock her out of it. Although Rosalind sounded a bit too excited about Jane's one night stand with an older man who just so happened to be the father of their oldest and dearest friend.

"In my bereaved state, I've been having trouble sleeping," Rosalind said in a sing-song voice. "So I just so happened to be wide awake last night at around an hour after midnight."

Skye's eyes snapped to Rosalind's, and her face turned bright red.

"What's going on?" Batty said. "What did you see?"

Jane flipped her head between her sisters. Rosalind sat down and wrapped her hands around her mug. She was relishing this. Jane had been locked up in her porch last night, perfectly chaste and quiet, so it wasn't about Alec.

"I'm just lucky there was a full moon," Rosalind said. "So I could see certain people wandering the beach."

"Jesus, Rosie, you are vicious," Skye muttered but a bashful smile was inching across her face.

"Don't make me say it, you tell them," Rosalind was practically squealing. "Hand in hand, kissing!"

"Tell us what?" Batty asked.

"Oh my god," Jane said. "It didn't happen."

"It did happen!" Rosalind screamed. "It finally did."

Skye sighed and looked heavenward, as if questioning how she had ended up with such silly sisters.

"Jeffrey and I are together now," Skye said. She laughed out loud and shook her head. "Finally. Sorry I was taking too long for you fools."

The three sisters erupted in screams and folded a squirming Skye into their arms.

Jane noticed that Batty had to blink a few times and shake off some hesitance, but Jane knew that Batty would get over her schoolgirl crush, especially when she realized that Destiny was truly involved in all this. As for herself, with all her newly enhanced writing intuition, Jane was already composing her maid of honor speech in her head.

"I can't believe you were spying," Skye said.

"I was not spying," Rosalind countered. "I was just looking out my window, it was a perfectly natural thing to do, and you were right there."

"Tell us everything," Jane said. "Every single detail right down to the grains of sand beneath your feet."

Skye opened her mouth, and it really looked like she was going to tell the story – she was too happy to not tell it – but then before she spoke all four girls heard the crackle of a car's wheels pulling into the Birches driveway.

They sat still as they heard heavy footsteps on the path. The footsteps of someone tall and strong, a former football player in fact. Then they heard a rap on the front door. How they knew, they could not say, but Jane swore to her dying day that all three younger sisters were looking at Rosalind before the voice called out.

"Hello?" the voice said. "Is anyone there?"

Tommy Geiger had arrived at Point Mouette.