Jasmine zipped her mouth shut.

“Are y’all telling secrets without me?” Gemma asked from a few feet away.

“This place is going to make Griswold’s look puny,” Jasmine said.

“I’m glad Uncle Haskell marked the boxes for me.” Liz pulled a box with MR. AND MRS. CLAUS LIGHTS written in big bold letters on the top from the back of her truck.

“Are they all like that?” Jasmine asked.

“Yes, they are,” Liz answered. “We’ll just have to dig through the boxes. Hey, you know what we should do? Put each box by the cutout where it goes rather than digging through them all.”

“You sound just like Raylen. Y’all might be kin to each other as organized as you are. Your Uncle Haskell is probably his great-great-seventeen-times-back-cousin or something,” Gemma said.

“God, I hope not,” Liz said.

“Why? Don’t you want to be kin to the O’Donnells?” Gemma asked.

“No, ma’am. Y’all argue too much for me,” Liz joked.

“It’s Dewar, isn’t it? I knew it from the first. You’ve got a crush on Dewar,” Gemma whispered.

Liz threw up both palms. “No, ma’am, I do not!”

“Well, crap!” Gemma sighed. “I wanted you to fall for him. We’ve got to get him married, and then Raylen.” Gemma crossed herself and went on, “God forbid, but then Colleen. I’m not sure there’s a man on the earth I can bribe into takin’ her off our hands.”

“Why?” Liz asked.

Gemma picked up a box of lights and carried them over to Betty Boop. “Because she’s so outspoken and pessimistic.”

“Not why about Colleen. Why do you have to worry about your brothers and sisters falling in love?” Liz asked.

Jasmine stacked one box on the top of the other and carried them across the lane. “Because according to Cash, they have to get married in the order of their birth.”

“I thought that was a joke,” Liz said.

“I heard y’all,” Dewar said, raising his voice. “And you might as well give it up, Gemma. I’m not being railroaded to the altar.”

“We could drug him and pay the girl,” Jasmine whispered.

“What was that?” Dewar asked.

“I heard her,” Ace said. “She said she was going to help Gemma drug you and pay some old gal to marry you.”

“Better bring your lunch because it’ll be an all-day job,” Dewar said.

Jasmine pointed a long, slim finger at him. “Darlin’, I could put something in your chicken fried steak, and you’d wake up next to some woman wearing a wedding band. We would make her sign a prenup so she couldn’t sue you for the farm in the divorce. You’d better think about that when Gemma starts lookin’ at wedding books. Us girls got to stick together.”

“I’d say you’d better be out girl huntin’, or else hire you a taster like they did in the old days every time you go anywhere near these witchy women. They want you to think they are jokin’, but they are all dead serious,” Ace said.