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On Francine’s suggestion, they drove her bright turquoise pickup truck (a truck was a necessity for an antiques dealer, she explained) to Captain Jeb’s, a low-slung dive bar on the outskirts of town. A neon sign depicting a ship flickered weakly above the doors, barely illuminating the vinyl siding that had seen far better days. The door was covered with stickers of various sizes and colors along with the scrawls of patrons.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Francine said brightly as they bounced their way into a space in the rutted oyster shell–paved parking lot. “It’s every bit as bad as it looks. C’mon.”

They found a spot at the far end of the bar. A woman a few stools down was staring at her phone and nursing what looked like a rum and Coke while a pair of middle-aged men played an intense game of darts in the far corner.

Cam settled onto her perch and examined the menu, which was about as basic as you could get. Burgers. Fries. Chicken tenders. She chuckled at the “Dark and Stormy” cocktail, which was clearly a nod to the town’s history.

“I know you’re a big-time gourmet, so you might hate it here, but my tastes are basically like a ten-year-old’s,” Francine laughed.

Cam was charmed by her honesty. Often people she met were falling all over themselves to show off their sophisticated palates.

“Hey, Tiny!” Francine greeted the bartender. Cam immediately realized that his nickname was somebody’s idea of the world’s most hilarious joke. In fact, Tiny was the kind of guy who looked like he could move a refrigerator with his pinkie finger. His tattooed forearms were as thick as the hams that hung from the racks of Cam’s favorite Spanish grocer back in Brooklyn.

“Yo, Lady F!” he called. “The usual?”

“You bet,” she said, and turned to Cam. “It’s a Dogfish Head lager. I guess I come here often.”

“Make that two,” Cam told Tiny. “Please.”

Francine and Cam chatted over their icy beers and a bowl of popcorn the bartender delivered with their drinks. Francine was married, Cam learned, happily, to a guy she had met here in Silver Cove, of all places, who taught math at the local high school. Her husband was currently at a band practice. (He was in a local rock and blues group that played gigs around the area, including sometimes here at Captain Jeb’s.) She had moved back to Silver Cove five years ago after being laid off from a job at a company that provided props and costumes for movies. She had thought she would stay only a couple of months, but here she was. She had been charmed by her old hometown—and in love.

Cam gave her the condensed version of why she had come back to Silver Cove and about the fete (Francine had laughed when she heard how Roxy had roped her into the catering gig), and about a work project (she stayed vague, not mentioning Izzy by name, of course) that was stressing her out.

The two women discovered they had plenty in common: Francine was a dog lover, too, although she was currently mourning the recent loss of her old mutt and was not ready to adopt again; they both simultaneously loved and dreaded their barre classes, and neither could wait for the next season of Bridgerton. They put in identical orders of cheeseburgers and fries.

“Okay, now that I’ve established myself as an otherwise sane human, I feel like I can tell you the story about the dress,” Cam finally said. “And the other stuff. But if you want to get up and leave—or call the authorities on me—at any point, I would completely understand.”

“I’m all ears,” Francine said, dipping a fry into ketchup. “Wait. Tiny, can we get another round? I sense that this tale requires more beer.”

Here goes, Cam thought. “So I think I’ve managed to summon a ghost from an old cookbook I found while I was helping to organize the jumble sale.”

“A ghost?” Francine asked.

“Yeah.” Cam realized how absolutely ridiculous she sounded.

“Are you kidding me?” Francine asked.

Ugh, I wish I were, Cam thought.

“Because that’s absolutely freaking amazing!” Francine sounded genuinely enthused. “I’ve never actually seen one, though I’ve felt like something was… I don’t know, like there, but not there? Does that make sense?”

“A week ago I would have said no,” Cam replied.

“Okay, tell me allll about your ghost.” Francine took a swig of beer and leaned in closer. “It lives in a cookbook? And do the dress and the apron belong to her? Spill every ghosty detail you’ve got, girl!”

Over cheeseburgers and fries, Cam told Francine the story. How she had brought home the cookbook, and how she felt a presence that first night when she had cooked from it, and then again when she made another recipe from the odd book. How she had gone back for the clothing and figured that it had belonged to the woman in the cookbook, A. Poulson, who she now knew was probably Ada Poulson, who was related to Roxy by marriage.

“Oh yeah,” Francine said with a smile. “Rox’s family tree is filled with Silver Cove luminaries. She’s royalty, at least according to her.”

“And the weirdest thing is that I keep hearing a voice, but it’s faint, like a whisper,” Cam continued. “It’s saying ‘find it,’ but I have no idea what she wants me to find or where to look! I already feel so overwhelmed with the fete and this work thing, and now I have this voice in my head that seems so insistent. Like, everyone is telling me what to do.”

“So, what are you going to do?” Francine asked, looking mesmerized.

“I guess I’m going to try to find it, whatever it is,” Cam answered. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before, so it must mean something.”

Francine nodded. “I know you will,” she said. “Because you are, like, scarily competent. Even back in high school, you seemed to have everything together. I always got the sense that you didn’t need any of us, and you were just waiting to get out of here and do your own thing.”

Cam was struck by this perspective. She hadn’t realized how people, or at least Francine, might have interpreted her standoffishness as not wanting friends. The truth was that she had been lonely here, at least when Avery wasn’t around. But meeting people, taking part in all those high school rituals like proms and movie nights and yearbook club, had just seemed so complicated, frightening even. Then in college and later in Brooklyn, she continued keeping to herself, mostly. By then, it had become habit, or maybe it still seemed easier. After a while, she stopped feeling lonely—or perhaps she had just gotten used to being an island unto herself.