He’d started doing it because he wanted to help to raise money for the local food bank whose supplies usually ran particularly low at the holiday season, and had come up with the idea of doing a dramatic reading of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Not the whole book of course, but luckily Dickens himself had created a condensed version that he could perform on his frequent tours of America.

The first year, a brave fifty or sixty of us filled the first few rows in one of the college’s smaller auditoriums. Last year it had been standing-room only in the drama department’s main theater. I hoped they didn’t have to turn too many people away tonight. Next year we might need to schedule two performances, unless the new drama department building, now under construction on the north side of the campus, was finished slightly ahead of time. The J. Montgomery Blake Center for the Dramatic Arts—Grandfather had donated a good chunk of its cost and browbeat a number of friends and foundations for the rest—would have several performance spaces, including an enormous state-of-the-art theater that could hold twice as many people as the hall we were in tonight. But since it wasn’t scheduled to open for another year …

We could worry about having two performances—complete with two sets of preperformance jitters—next Christmas.

“And this is the first year the boys are old enough to go!” Michael added, beaming at his sons.

Actually, I wasn’t all that optimistic about their chances of staying the course, but they were so eager that I thought we’d at least give them a chance. And if I had to leave early with one or both of them—well, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen the performance before. Thanks to all that rehearsing, I could have recited it along with him.

“And it’s time we all took off,” I said. “Daddy needs to get there early,” I added to the boys.

I drove, since in his preperformance state Michael tended to forget about boring, practical things like turn signals and stoplights. The boys chattered happily about SpongeBob and Frosty the Snowman, which I hoped was enough of a distraction to keep his nerves from starting to fray.

We dropped him off at the stage door of what people were already calling the Old Drama Building. It was built in the overly ornate Gothic-revival style that made the Caerphilly campus so popular for film crews looking for locations for music videos and low-budget vampire films. Fortunately the snow and the addition of wreaths on the doors and candles in the windows created more of a festive Victorian Christmas atmosphere.

“Bweak a leg, Daddy,” Jamie said. I’d been coaching him on the fact that it was bad luck to wish an actor good luck.

“Two yegs,” Josh said, competitive as usual.