It didn’t matter that Maddie made fun of her, Esme liked wearing vintage men’s watches. She hated carrying her phone if she didn’t have pockets, and her Gruen watch had a face big enough to be easy to read.

The cleanup day after the big Fourth of July fireworks game was predictably hellishly hot and humid. Maddie had asked for volunteers since she didn’t have money to hire extra service. The group had started early—after another late night—and so the work went slowly and sluggishly.

“Come in, young lady, and shut the door behind you.”

Monty Ortzelberg’s low, growling voice came from the depths of a plush George Smith sofa in Rory’s office. Maddie prickled at “young lady” (was she ten years old?) and at the sight of Rory’s Architectural Digest office that he used for five minutes every month.

Early in the morning, well before the sun was up, Maddie made coffee in her tiny kitchen. She poured boiling water into a stovetop pot filled with New Orleans Roast, the strongest stuff she had. She had been avoiding Esme since her meeting with Monty last week. It helped that Nick had stayed through the All-Star break, and Esme spent most of her time with him.

Mid-July in the South almost made Maddie homesick for winter in Chicago. The temperature was 90 degrees at seven in the morning when Maddie arrived at the Grand Lunch. She camped out in her usual booth, ready to get back to work. Her thoughts drifted back to the steamy weekend with Carlton.

“No one followed us, did they?” Maddie twisted around in the seat of the enormous Chevy Impala station wagon that she and Carlton had used to escape from Sweetgum.

“Are you up to something?” Esme asked her niece. “You’ve been bouncing off the walls all night.”

“My granny would say you’re as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs,” Tillie chimed in.

“Don’t you look nice, Madison! Where did you find that sundress? I adore the red poppy pattern. Your aunt’s handiwork, I expect.” Gertrude Thornberry took Maddie’s arm and walked close beside her in a conspiratorial huddle.

Sosa and Sandberg sat by Maddie’s suitcase and whimpered. She bent down and scratched each dog behind the ears. They nuzzled close to her legs, and Sosa plopped down on her feet as if to say, “Don’t go! We won’t let you.”

“Mulligatawny soup will cure what ails you,” Esme promised.

Maddie took the lid off the soup and stirred it. “Mmm, smells wonderful.”

Six months ago, Maddie had walked down these same basement steps in Russell Wilde’s house to make her first appearance on Manders Matter. She could not have imagined the journey that awaited her on that day.

The sky was that unbearably deep shade of blue that means autumn in North Carolina. Esme threw up a little prayer of thanks to the baseball gods. It was going to be a gorgeous afternoon.

It was a beautiful day for a ball game. On the fifth anniversary of their meeting, Maddie found Carlton outside the bleachers at Wrigley Field. She had taken the day off and he had done the same.

Timeline of Significant Events