Landry and I hide our gifts in my room, then we make sandwiches. Jake rings the doorbell as we’re loading the dishwasher after lunch, and he’s holding a staple gun.

“Does your dad know you borrowed that?” I ask as I let him in.

“Yes. But it’s possible he doesn’t know which friend I’m helping out today.”

“Thank you.” I hug him, and I don’t want to let him go. “I’m sorry your parents hate me.”

“They don’t hate you,” he whispers into my hair as his arms wrap around me. “They just don’t want my name associated with a scandal.”

I roll my eyes as I shrug out of his embrace. “They think I sullied their precious angel, and that grudge predates Lullaby Doe.”

Jake’s brows arch as he pulls me close again. “Want me to tell them that any sullying definitely went both ways?”

“That’d be great, thanks.”

He laughs, and when my brother and sister emerge from the kitchen, he finally lets me go.

Penn pulls a cardboard box of Christmas lights from the garage, and we spend about an hour sorting through them, plugging them all in to check for outages. Between the old lights that are still functioning and the new ones Penn got on clearance, I think we have enough to string along the front edge of the roof, and maybe enough to wrap the trunk of the tree in our front yard.

We haven’t put up lights in a few years, because Dad was either deployed, in rehab, or not feeling up to it. But Penn used to help him decorate, and Jake helps his father every year, so I feel like we’re pretty well prepared for the challenge. Except that we only have one ladder.

We give Landry one of the new strings and assign her the tree trunk, while Jake, Penn, and I take turns on the ladder, stapling strands of white lights in as straight a line as we can manage. After about an hour, we’re halfway done, but Landry’s hardly made it a foot up the tree trunk.

When I turn to find her on her phone again, I whisper to Penn, while he holds the ladder steady for Jake. “What’s going on with Landry?”

Penn glances at her. “She and Norah are having another fight.”

“Really? She didn’t say anything.” I’d offered to let Norah come shopping with us, and when Landry didn’t seem to want that, I’d assumed she was going to be buying something for her best friend.

But now I realize she didn’t get a thing for Norah. Come to think of it, I can’t remember Norah and Fletcher coming over to finish their extra credit project either.

“Landry,” I call as I cross the yard, zipping my coat against the cold. “What’s wrong?”