Aidan and Brennan looked at each other in surprise as the girl laughed softly.

“Well, you know her now; this is my dear great-granddaughter that I had to kill,” Lidora Nader said while handing the girl the nut bread. “Look what your grandmother did with her own hands!” she added theatrically.

Briccia sniffed it with her eyes closed and smiled.

“It smells delicious, Grandma, thank you. It would be great to eat it with chamomile tea. Can you put the kettle on for me?” she asked.

The old woman gave her a kiss on the head and left the cabin as if nothing had happened while Briccia put the bread on the nearest table.

“I suppose she already thinks of Summerville’s bakery as ‘her own hands,’” she teased, “but it’s the thought that counts.”

“I see her very much alive...” Brennan murmured to Aidan, but it was the girl who replied.

“And I hear very well, too. My grandmother likes to be very theatrical. She always says she had to kill me because everyone out there thinks I was born dead,” she ex