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Jade Clark: I will curse all of you.

I almost missed the call.

But I had one rule: If Jade called, I was answering.

“Hello?” I asked into the phone.

All I heard was the sound of frogs.

I frowned and checked the time. It was eight thirty, but she always had a habit of trying to go to sleep early when she’d had a bad day.

And if she’d gone to sleep and was now at the spring . . .

“Shit,” I said, nearly falling off the couch.

“What?” Agnes asked. “You almost made me drop my ice cream.”

“It’s Jade. Fuck, I think she’s in trouble.”

“Because of the sleepwalking thing she does?” Beatrice asked.

“Yes.”

“Where is she?” Agnes added, putting down her spoon.

“She’s out in the forest,” I said.

“We need to get her!” Beatrice called, tripping over herself to run to her shoes.

“What if she gets hurt?”

As we drove to Hugh’s land, I thought of all the things that could go wrong. What if she fell and called me? What if she slept there and an animal found her?

The girls were quiet, and it felt like they were serious for the first time in their lives. Apparently, they were like me. When it came to Jade, all bets were off.

“Okay, so she’s not going to be able to talk,” I told them again. I’d said this before, but I wasn’t sure if they would remember. “She’s asleep, but she’s walking.”

“We know,” Agnes said with a roll of her eyes.

“Still. I want to do this right.”

“You really care about her,” Beatrice said quietly.

“Of course I do.”

“So you can care about something.”

The words hit hard. “I’d do the same for you two.”

“Really?” Agnes asked.

“Yes. Without hesitation.”

And I had. Neither of them knew that I wasn’t in the will. Alice had no other family members who stepped up.

I was the only one who did.

The girls were quiet when we pulled in.