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Inventions, but we were still in something of a hurry to get the Tax Man squared away, so we figured we'd save that one for another day.
    Then Jackie came across a file marked Persons of Interest.
    "Open that one," Georgia said. "We could use some interesting people around here."
    When Jackie did, the file contained pictures of three people: a short woman who looked like a toadstool; a pretty, dark-haired woman with an insane look in her eyes; and a man with an egghead.
    We knew those three people.
    "That's the Wicket!" Durinda said.
    "That's Crazy Serena!" Zinnia said.
    "What's Principal Freud doing with the two of them?" Marcia wondered.
    "He's not with them," Annie said. "Those are three separate pictures. Still, it is odd."
    "My, those are interesting people." Rebecca's eyes glittered.
    "I don't think we have time right now to figure out all the answers to all the questions in the universe," Jackie said. "So let's put this one aside for a while and look at one more file before we get back to those taxes."
    Jackie closed that file and returned to the list of other files: Holiday Shopping; Mysteries of Egypt; Things to Do...
    Zinnia desperately wanted Jackie to open the one called Holiday Shopping. "At least then," she said, "I'll finally know what I would have gotten for a present this year if we'd ever gotten our presents."
    "Jackie's not going to do that," Rebecca said, "not if we're only going to look at one more file today."
    "But why not?" Zinnia asked.
    "Because we won't let her," Annie said firmly.
    "Hey," Jackie said, "how about I open this one marked Family?"
    "That could be good," Zinnia said, starting to cheer up already. "It'll probably be all about us."
    Only it wasn't about us at all. In the folder marked Family, there was a picture of three women: Crazy Serena, Mommy, and another woman who looked almost exactly like Mommy.

CHAPTER SIX

    "What does it all mean? "Zinnia asked.
    "I haven't a clue," Jackie said. "But I'll tell you one thing."
    "What's that?" Durinda asked.
    "We don't have time for this right now," Jackie said, shutting off the computer. "We have to call Pete back and figure out what to do next about the Tax Man."
    "Are you crazy? "Georgia asked.
    "Excuse me?" Jackie said mildly.
    "How can you just turn off the computer at a time like this?" Georgia said, looking like she wanted to punch something. Or someone.
    "By pressing that little button," Jackie said, indicating the power switch.
    "That's not what I meant!" Georgia shouted. "We just saw a picture of Mommy with a woman who looks almost exactly like her and Crazy Serena. We saw a file containing a picture of Principal Freud along with pictures of the Wicket and Crazy Serena. Don't you think it's more important that we focus on that rather than calling Pete about the Tax Man? "
    "No, I don't," said Jackie simply.
    "Please explain," Georgia said, tapping her foot, "before I hit something. Or someone. "
    See? We knew Georgia wanted to do that.
    "It's like this," Jackie said. "At the end of your adventure month, we started to finally see the pattern of things. We saw that we were getting our powers and gifts in order of our birth, from Annie through Zinnia, with each girl getting her power and gift during the course of a single month. We remembered the original note we found behind the loose stone in the drawing room telling us that we all needed to find our powers and gifts before we could discover what happened to our parents. So we did the math and it finally sank in: we realized we wouldn't really know the whole truth until August, Zinnia's month."
    "We did?" Georgia asked.
    "Actually," Jackie said," you did. You were the one who put it all together."
    "I..." Georgia looked puzzled, but then a light dawned in her eyes. "Why, yes, that was me!"
    "You were very smart in that moment," Durinda said to Georgia kindly. "Really, except for rejecting your gift at the very beginning of the month, you were smart nearly the whole time."
    "I really was,"