Peaches hopped off her barstool and kissed Mandy once on each cheek. She couldn’t help herself. She just had to feel the powdery white softness of Mandy’s cheeks. She had to know firsthand what Mandy smelled like.

“It’s so great that you’re here.”

She smelled like a forest. Not floral, more musky. Like the woody, barky smell of mulch in people’s gardens at night after a summer rain. Or maybe she just smelled like pot.

Mandy kept smiling brightly even though she had no idea who this cute, dimply, friendly, cool-as-fuck woman with the drumsticks in the back pocket of her ripped jeans was. She turned to Stuart for help.

“Peaches Park, the school nurse. You met before on the stoop,” Stuart explained. “Ted’s school nurse.”

“And bartender. And drummer. And DJ or master of ceremonies, or whatever you call the person who womans the karaoke machine,” Peaches elaborated. Whenever anyone introduced her as the school nurse, she felt like she had to elaborate. “Sorry about the smell. Some new cleaning product.”

She was stalling. Elizabeth had told her not to get things started until the bar was full of people.

Roy wished Wendy would arrive. She was so much better at meeting and greeting. He held onto his beer and shook the man’s hand and nodded at his attractive, curvy wife, who looked like she still thought she was seventeen and had never done much besides drink lager and put on mascara, although apparently she had a child. He recognized Stuart Little not by name but by sight. He saw him every morning with his small son. And he was vaguely aware that it was Stuart and Mandy’s small son Shy was babysitting for tonight. Cobble Hill certainly was an odd and tiny place.

“You’re the author,” Mandy said, because she knew. Everybody knew.

“Yes.”

The door swung open and Roy was heartened to see Tupper, wearing his signature navy-blue suit and tie, his auburn hair freshly combed, his femininely handsome face freshly shaved.

Mandy recognized the well-dressed man whose dinner she’d almost stolen the other day.

“Is she here?” Tupper asked Roy anxiously, ignoring the others.

“Not that we’ve been able to detect,” Roy responded honestly. It was possible that Elizabeth was hiding in a closet or under the floorboards, although from what he’d garnered from Google images, Elizabeth was an extremely tall woman. She’d be easy to spot.

“Actually,” Peaches interrupted. Tupper had been by the bar a few times in the last month or so, asking after his wife. He never hung around long, insisting that they “respected each other’s work.” “Elizabeth was here… recently. Hasn’t she been home?”