Lisa bent down even farther and grabbed the ornament. “Got it!” she said, straightening up again and reaching toward the top of the tree.

At that precise moment, the back door opened and a familiar voice shouted, “Girls! Come quick! It’s an emergency!”

The ladder wobbled as Hannah reacted to the panic in her mother’s voice. Lisa let out a little gasp of fright, but somehow she managed to attach the tree-topper and climb down two rungs before the ladder began to tip.

“I can’t hold it!” Hannah exclaimed as the ladder tipped even further. “Jump, Lisa!”

Lisa didn’t wait for a second invitation. She leaped down to the floor as the ladder collapsed with a clatter of old wood and stressed metal fasteners as it fell apart.

“Good heavens! What on earth happened?”

Hannah and Lisa turned to see Delores Swensen standing in the doorway, staring at them in shock. “And where did you get that decrepit old ladder?”

“It was Dad’s,” Hannah said, resisting the urge to rail at her mother for startling them at such a critical point in their decorating endeavor. She took a deep breath to calm down, and then she asked, “What’s the emergency, Mother?”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have used the word emergency to describe it,” Delores replied, sounding slightly contrite. And then, in typical Delores fashion, she changed the subject. “How did you get Dad’s ladder, Hannah?”

“I appropriated it from the basement of Dad’s hardware store. I figured I might need a ladder so I brought it here when we sold the hardware store.”

“You should have appropriated a new aluminum ladder, dear. This one was your Grandpa Swensen’s ladder, and I tried for years to get your father to replace it. He finally got a new ladder for the house, but he must have kept this old one for sentimental reasons.”

“I can understand that. That’s why I wanted to keep it. But I should have propped it up in a corner and bought a new one for us to use. That’s what I intended to do, but it slipped my mind.”

“I’ll remind you,” Lisa said quickly. “Don’t worry about that!”

“I won’t forget again. This is the year we’re getting a new one, and I’ll order a metal ladder that won’t rust. And I’ll get one that has actual steps instead of rungs. I’ll call to order it right after we hear about Mother’s emergency.”

“And after we have some coffee and cookies to calm down,” Lisa added, turning to Delores. “Let’s go to the kitchen. We just finished baking for the day and we made some of Andrea’s Red Velvet Whippersnapper Cookies.”

Delores smiled. “They sound good. . . . Of course everything you dear girls bake is good.” She turned to Hannah. “What are you going to do with that rickety old ladder?”