She counted again the six wood panels. Down the hall in the kitchen, her parents were fooling around with the dishwasher. It had finally been installed that afternoon. Iris’s mom was loading coffee mugs into the top rack, and her dad was reloading them into the other side, where he apparently thought they should go. She heard her mother’s warm, full laugh, and the cadence of her father’s reply. Her parents, she realized, were another pair—like Starla and Isobel, like Boris’s twin sisters. Like Iris and Sarah had been. Iris held a book in her hands. It was tied around with one of her hair ribbons, red and white grosgrain. The book’s spine was maroon, embossed with gold. The cover read Anne of Green Gables in tall purple letters, and there was a picture of two girls—one dark-haired, the other with red braids—sitting under a tree, looking off into the distance. It was an old copy of the book. Not first edition or anything, but not new, either. Iris had found it at Used and Valuable Books on Fourth Street.
