This story is a bit more of a mystery… aaa and bbb are asked by a college professor to come show his class (Open Minded spiritualism) what she can do… an discovered about an on campus graveyard is a 50 year old list of those buried, dates, and cause of death… the professor enjoys debunking frauds (and sees all spiritualists as frauds – why call class open minded than?), and is quite frust rated when she is correct time after time… and then they come to a grave where there is a recent burial – 2 bodies at one site – and the new body is of a 9-year old whom they had been hired by the family (in a different city) 3 years earlier to find, but could not…

So the mystery, who killed the little girl (aaa can sense a feeling of trust, then betrayal, and suffocation with something blue) and why was the body moved for aaa to find.

Interestingly, aaa and bbb are not into solving the mystery per se, but at every opportunity they ask questions, and together they try to puzzle things out. The family has moved to this town, to try to begin anew… and the upswing is that a cousin, Felicia, had a thing for the girl’s dad, Joel – and she hoped that by taking away the child, the dad would leave his wife… but he didn’t, and now his wife is pregnant again and Felicia is trying to shake things up again with aaa. The professor in question was quite vain (she also kills him when he tries a little blackmail), and susceptible to her charms (as he was to any pretty woman who showed an interest in his cheating butt) – and she suggested aaa for his class. We also meet another cousin, an 18 year old who is gay and hiding it from his family still – he comes to see aaa & bbb with his lover, and the author describes them well.. He tells them he saw his grandfather’s car the day that the 9-year old was kidnapped – he had been with a different lover when he was supposed to be in school and had returned home to shower, so he didn’t tell anyone because he did not want to explain what he had been doing…

And Felicia back then had slept with bbb… and had called him regularly (he was flattered, but now he knows she was just using him to monitor aaa)… and it is unclear how bbb feels about her – a bit more than a one-night stand, as when Felicia calls him at the end, he goes to her in spite of aaa’s saying no… Aaa realizes in this story that the only one she would trust to build a family with is bbb - that she loves him… but she must hide it, or he’d leave… and bbb, in both books, shows hints of being jealous when she liaisons with someone… ahhhh…

They continue to try to connect with their little sisters – and seem to be making headway – being invited to watch one play in her first basketball game, and to hear the other one sing (though she doesn’t sing too well)… regularly aaa feels unsure in how to respond to people, yet she always seems to find the right thing to say and the right tone to say it in… when one sister (via phone) complains about the other sister, she is diplomatic, supportive of the one’s feelings and yet introduces empathy for the other’s point of view…