Mr. Smithfork surprises his kids by coming home early and playing football with them in the living room. While they play, they reminisce about the time before their dad made it, when games like this occurred regularly rather than sparingly, as happens now. Brid knocks the couch backward when scoring a touchdown; the noise attracts the attention of Mrs. Eloise Munn—their downstairs neighbor—and her housekeeper, Annika. The two introduce themselves while politely asking the Smithforks to keep the noise down; Mrs. Munn has a higher ceiling, which causes more echoes from upstairs noise. Mr. Smithfork agrees, and the children are disappointed that their dad cares so much about how others perceive him.

After everyone goes to bed, CJ sneaks into his father’s office to check the hearth for clues. He finds none and falls asleep on the floor. The following day, his dad greets him but does not stop to have a conversation; CJ goes back to sleep, and when he wakes again, he sees numbers written in a circular pattern scrawled into a brick inside the chimney. After writing them down, he goes to the other hearths with Brid and Patrick to find more numbers. Brid figures out that the numbers correlate to letters of the alphabet, and soon, they have another clue to Mr.