Chapter 19
Closing the Deal
The next few days were calm, if not restful. Zoe mourned her grandmother, and they all mourned Ronan. Katie and Ellen became more or less permanent fixtures of the big house on Clover Hill, spending nearly as much time there as Penny and Zoe themselves, and Susan ran herself frantic playing mother hen to the whole brood. She had been hysterical with worry after their return from the landfill; she had awakened to an empty house and no notes of explanation, but Penny and Katie had been able to pass off their minor injuries as a fall down by the creek while looking for Zoe.
Susan, who had seen examples of Penny’s grace first hand, accepted the fabrication without question, but they still had to convince her that Penny was in fact not bleeding to death. While
