Except did I want her to know I’d realized she was accessing her voice mail from afar? Or by bringing up voice mail at all, set her to wondering if I had somehow found a way to listen to hers?

I was sprinkling herbs, when I remembered that a year or so ago I had needed to hear a message I had mistakenly deleted on my cell phone. I’d been able to get to it by paging back through the menu. While it seemed unlikely this older phone would have the ability to retrieve deleted messages, I scrolled through the menu anyway. And luck was my friend for the second time that day.

I went through the steps needed, but I was only able to retrieve one message. The lone call was from a man named Craig, who wanted to know why Kim hadn’t been seen at Against the Wind in a couple of weeks.

Funny thing, but now I wanted to know exactly the same thing.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I was learning so much about children. For instance, never let persons who are shorter than you believe they’re in control if you take them shopping.

As promised, yesterday after school we had gone to buy Christmas lights. Almost immediately, the one string of lights I had envisioned had morphed into multiple strings to wrap around each tree, roots to top. There were extension cords and needle-like branches involved, and when I’d suggested we backtrack and save all decorations for our indoor tree, I’d been met with such despair that, not only did we now own six strings of outdoor lights, we also owned an inflatable sculpture featuring Santa in a holly-sprinkled bathing suit with a reindeer under a palm tree.

Once we inflated Santa, the sculpture would top my height by almost two feet.

There was good news, though. Now I was Holly and Noelle’s favorite aunt, as well as their only one.

I’d decided to get a head start on the lights, since another thing I’d learned was that children have big ideas and little patience. I’d watched a how-to video on YouTube, measured the distance from the outdoor outlet to the closest tree and, since I couldn’t count on Mystery Intruder, I’d carefully stretched my extension cord where it would do the least amount of damage. I’d wrapped it around the base of the first tree and was now—I hoped—ready to go. According to YouTube, my next job was to assess the tree to decide what branches should be lighted. Less than a moment passed before I began to wrap. The whole point was just to have something blinking uncontrollably at night when the girls were outside watching.

I was on the ground between trees, butt in the air, when Bismarck, who was keeping me company, began to bark. I pushed out and up just in time to see my dog buddy ecstatically greeting his best friend.

“Darn dog. I had such a great view.” Teo did something with his hands and Bismarck immediately sat adoringly at his feet.