* * *
The second the play ends, Libby and I sprint out. We’re both about to lose it and would rather do so privately. Halfway to the marquee, a cheery voice stops us.
“Nora! Libby?” Sally Goode cuts a trail toward us, alongside a blond behemoth of a man using a wheelchair. Her dimpled smile is Charlie-esque; the cloud of jasmine and marijuana in which she arrives is not. It’s hard to imagine structured, sharp-edged Charlie being raised by this woodsy, freewheeling waif.
“Fancy seeing you here!” Libby sings.
“Small towns and all that,” Sally says. “I don’t think y’all have met my husband?”
“Clint,” the man offers. “Pleasure to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you,” Libby and I say in unison.
He asks, “What’d you think of the play?”
Libby and I exchange a panicked look.
“Oh, don’t make them answer that.” Sally swats his arm, smiling. “At least not before the salon. You gotta come—we always have friends over for drinks and pie after a show.”
“This is a regular occurrence?” My sister almost chokes over the words. We’re still too slaphappy to be having this conversation.
“They do four shows a year,” Sally says.
Clint’s brow lifts. “Is that all? Seems like a lot more.”
Libby swallows a laugh, but a squeak still makes it out of her throat.
“Please say you’ll come,” Sally pleads.
“Oh, we couldn’t intrude—” I begin.
“Nonsense!” she cries. “There’s no such thing as intruding in Sunshine Falls. Or did you not just watch the same play as us?”
“We definitely watched it,” Libby mumbles.
Sally hands her purse to her husband and digs through it for a scrap of paper and a pen, then jots down an address. “We’re just on the other side of the woods and up the path from you.” She hands the paper to Libby. “But there’s a street and driveway that runs right up to our house, if you don’t feel like tromping through the dark.”
She doesn’t wait for an RSVP or even a reply. They’re moving off, the crowd bottlenecking behind us.
“Oh, Boris did wonderfully,” an older gentleman is saying. “And only eleven years old!”
Libby squeezes my hand, and we take off down the sidewalk, giggling like preteens high on Mountain Dew.
* * *
The Lastra-Goode home sits at the end of a long drive lined with mature oaks. It’s far enough outside town that there’s little light to interrupt the sparkling blanket of night sky overhead or the masses of fireflies blinking in the shrubs.
It’s a two-story colonial, with white siding and freshly painted black shutters. In the oversized driveway, around ten cars are already parked, with another pulling in behind us as Hardy stops to let us out.
As we approach the front doors, Libby gazes up at the front of the cozy house and says dreamily, “I would pay a million dollars to be here on Christmas.”
“I guess that explains why Brendan does the budgeting.”
Libby’s arm stiffens through mine. I glance over at her. She’s paled a bit too. I can’t tell if she looks stressed or sick, or both. Either way, the knot of dread gives a sharp pulse behind my rib cage, a reminder that even in those hours when it shrinks, it never vanishes.
I jog her arm. “Is everything okay, Lib?”
Her surprise melts into neutrality. “Of course! Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I just mean, if you need anything,” I say, “you know I’d always—”
“Hello, hello!” Sally calls, swinging the door open. “Come on in!” She has to shout to be heard as she ushers us through the jasmine-scented front hall toward the thunder-roll of laughter and hum of overlapping conversations at the back of the house. “Just so you know, we typically pretend everything was good.”
“Excuse me?” I say.
Her smile deepens her crow’s feet. She looks every bit like a woman in her sixties, and all the more striking for it, in a woodsy, sun-beaten way.
“The play,” she clarifies. “Or when it’s a ceramics show, or a craft market, or whatever else: We pretend it’s good. At least until we’ve had a couple rounds.” She pats our shoulders and moves off, calling, “Make yourselves at home!”
“I’m gonna need everyone to make it through a couple rounds real quick,” Libby says.
“What I was saying outside, Lib—”