“I may have, yes. I had a busy day at work.” A mind-numbing day, actually. One that was exactly like the day before it and the one before that, clacking out letters in a windowless office as part of a typing pool. After paying her rent and a portion of the debt she felt she owed Audrey, Eve would be lucky to have enough money left over to buy one toy for Harry, let alone an entire catalogue full of them.

Audrey poked her head around the corner from the kitchen. “Dinner is ready. Wash up, please.”

Eve stood and walked toward Audrey. “Where did they get the catalogue?”

“It’s called the Wish Book, Mommy,” Harry called to her.

“I think it came about a month ago, but I found it again when I straightened up this morning. They’ve been glued to it all afternoon.” The boys stood to wash their hands, carrying the catalogue to the bathroom with them.

“Look at that, Bobby!” she heard Harry saying as they went. “It’s a whole service station, with gasoline pumps and cars and everything!”

“I want one!”

“That Wish Book seems to have opened a Pandora’s box of greedy longing,” Eve told Audrey with a sigh. She would never be able to buy even a quarter of those toys for her son.

When they finally sat down at the kitchen table, Harry bolted his food in record time. “Hurry, Mommy, hurry!” he begged. “We’re gonna miss the Santa Claus Parade.”

Eve continued to eat at a leisurely pace. “Don’t worry. We have plenty of time.”

“Do you have to go away tonight, Mummy?” Bobby asked Audrey. The worried look on his face was exactly like his mother’s. Audrey had been a worrier for as long as Eve had known her, which was most of their thirty-two years. They had met as twelve-year-olds in the woods surrounding Wellingford Hall, where Eve’s mother served as lady’s maid to Audrey’s mother, the wealthy and aristocratic Lady Rosamunde.

“No, my classes are all finished for the semester,” Audrey replied.

“Don’t you remember how anxious your mum was when she was studying for her exams last week?” Eve asked. “We barely got a full sentence out of her.”

“My final marks came in the mail today,” Audrey said quietly.

“Well, are you going to show us or were they a disaster?”

Audrey smiled her shy, Audrey smile, dipping her head a little as if bowing before royalty. “They weren’t bad.”

“Let me guess —you earned top marks in both classes, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Good job, you! We’ll have to celebrate.”