In a few minutes he returned and stood before me, wrapped up in a towel. “You still in bed, you lazy thing?” He started rummaging through his closet for some dress pants and a real shirt.

“My, my. A shirt with buttons, we are going fancy tonight.”

“Oh, no. These aren’t buttons. They’re snaps,” he said, pulling the shirt around his shoulders. “It’ll make it easier for you later, so you don’t have to rip another shirt off me.”

“I didn’t rip your last shirt off,” I said and laughed. “You did.”

“Hey, if you get to choose to remember that you beat me fair and square climbing that tree, I get to remember the shirt thing my way.”

“Fine.” I threw the blanket off and swung my feet out of bed. Peter stopped dressing and watched me, smiling. “I’m going to take a quick shower too.”

“You should’ve just hopped in with me. We could’ve saved time and water.”

“If I’d gotten in with you, we would have saved neither.” I got in the shower, at first determined not to get my hair wet, but it felt so good to let the hot water flow over me, washing away the parts of the last twenty-four hours that I didn’t care to remember, and somehow reinforcing the sensuality of the parts that I did.

When I stepped out of the shower, I dried off quickly, and wrapped myself in the towel. The bedroom was empty, although Peter had laid my dress and underwear out on the bed. I was just starting to dress when the door opened a crack. Peter poked his head through it. “You got a visitor.”

“Who is it?”

“A woman. Says her name is something like Rivkuh.”

“Rivkah. Rivkah Levi.” I hadn’t seen or even thought of Rivkah since the day the line had selected me to be an anchor. She had been one of the three witches who’d arrived early to prepare our house for the ceremony, to search for energy leaks or ingresses that might interfere with the investment of the line’s energy in the new anchor. Their efforts had been wildly unsuccessful.

“Yeah, that’s it. You okay? Should I make her leave?”

“Mercy, darling,” Rivkah’s voice came to me from over Peter’s shoulder. “Get dressed and come talk to me.”

I looked at Peter, then shrugged. “I’ll be right out, Mrs. Levi.”

“Rivkah, please, dear. Peter, do you have any wine?” I heard her opening and closing cupboards. “Ah, here’s some red. Corkscrew?”

“I’ll be right there,” Peter said and closed the door behind him.

I towel-dried my hair and wove it into a single braid. It would be a tangled mess later, but Rivkah was not someone you kept waiting. If I didn’t make it out to her quickly, she would invite herself in to join me. I dressed, smoothing out the wrinkles that had collected in the skirt of my dress, and went into the living room to find Peter sitting across from Rivkah at his kitchen table.

“There she is,” Rivkah said, rising and waving me into her arms. I hadn’t expected such an effusive greeting from someone I barely knew. She kissed my cheek. “Mazel tov on the little one.” She released me and reached for her wine glass. “To Colin,” she said, holding her glass out to Peter, who clinked with her.

“To Colin,” Peter echoed, a certain hesitancy in his voice.

Rivkah sat down. “So tell me, darling. What has been going on here with you and this family of yours?”

“Have you spoken to them yet?”

“No, not yet. I came directly from the airport. I wanted to talk to you first.” She leaned back in her chair, stretching into a relaxed and nonthreatening position.

“Who else from the families is coming?”

“No one else. Just me. I insisted it would be better for me to come alone, rather than dozens of us showing up like the Spanish Inquisition. Now tell me what happened last night. What did you all do to set the line clanking like a firehouse bell?”

I sat, trying to gain a little time to get my thoughts together.

“Mrs. Levi, Mercy has been dealing with a lot of stress. It isn’t good for her or our baby. I don’t want her to relive any of what happened. We’re moving on, putting the bad things behind us.”

“Again, call me Rivkah, and don’t you worry about this young woman of yours or your child. They are both much more resilient than you could begin to imagine.”

“All the same—”

“Peter,” she interrupted him, reaching out and patting his hand. “Why don’t you go out for a little bit and take a walk. Enjoy this lovely evening while Mercy and I have a chat.”

“This is my house.”

“And it is adorable.” She held up both hands, palms up, motioning around the room as if she were a game show hostess. She smiled and nodded, her dark curls bouncing. “We don’t need long. Take a spin up to that sweet park I passed on the way here. Daffin, isn’t it? We’ll be all finished by the time you return.”

Peter had to be the most good-natured guy I knew, but even he got a bit peeved when he was ejected from his own home. He looked at me for guidance, and I nodded, doing my best to apologize with my eyes.

He stood. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” he said and gave Rivkah a stern glance.

“That’s a good boy,” Rivkah said. “Oh, Mercy, you two are going to have such a beautiful child.”

Peter frowned, but he headed obediently to the door. “Twenty minutes,” he said and headed out the door.

After the door closed behind him, Rivkah reached out and took my hand. “He loves you very much—you know that, right?”

I nodded. “Yes. I’m very lucky to have him.”

“And he you,” she said and then let go of me. She took another sip of wine. “So Emily has come home.” She waited for my reaction, but I remained silent. “It must have been a terrible shock for you and your family.”

How could I answer that? Seeing the dream of having my mother returned to me changed, bastardized into a bloody nightmare. “How did you know?”

“Emmet,” she said. “He came home to me, to his mama.”

“Mama?”

“Well, I was the only woman involved in his creation, so if that doesn’t make me his mother, I don’t know what else I’d be to him.” She tilted her head and seemed to be taking a moment to consider me. “He’s totally besotted with you as well. You’ve broken his heart.”

“I am truly sorry for hurting him.” I had found myself using variations on that phrase a lot lately. “I didn’t mean to.” Yep. That one too. I wondered if I should aim for the trifecta with “I had no choice.” I decided instead to just stop talking.

Rivkah shrugged. “Well, he’s alive now, and getting your heart broken is part of being alive. You did the right thing in sending him away. Clean breaks heal the quickest. He’ll mend.” She paused. “Now back to business. Maybe it’s your own fault for naming the boy ‘Emmet,’ but he isn’t gifted at dissimulation. He knows you are in over your head, so he shared with me the truth of what happened last night. The whole story. The complete story. Now I am going to tell you the version that I will share with the families when I make my report to them, so you listen up.” She leaned forward on the table and folded her hands.