Polly wiped her nose with the soggy tissue. I handed her a fresh one.

“Thanks,” she said. “He kept calling and texting me to say that he was going to be in Boston on business and he wanted to see me. I told him to leave me alone, and then I stopped answering.”

Polly looked over at our classroom phone. “And then he called me here. He knows where I work. Ohmigod, what am I going to do?” She looked down at the unmistakable swell of her belly.

“I took care of it,” Ethan said. “I told him, Galen, that the baby’s mine.”

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who knew Polly’s secret—that her ex was the father of her baby.

“Really?” Polly said.

Ethan nodded. “He’s staying at The Inn at Marshbury Harbor. We’re picking him up for dinner at 7.”

“We?” Polly said. “As in you and me?”

“Seems like,” Ethan said.

“How’s that going to fly with your girlfriend?” I asked, because it seemed like somebody should.

“I’ll get back to you on that,” Ethan said.

“You don’t need to do this,” Polly said. “I’ll figure out something else.”

“It’s done,” Ethan said.

Crisis or no crisis, the holiday performance must go on, so the three of us headed to the all-purpose room.

Ethan began hanging a backdrop he’d made out of a painted drop cloth. Polly and I sat cross-legged on the floor on the other side of the room, hot glue gunning dog bones to plastic headbands for the “Dance of the Sugarplum Puppies.”

“So,” I said. “Would it be inappropriate for me to mention that your wasband is unusually hot?”

“Ha,” Polly said. “Usually the first thing people say is what is he?”

I picked up a red plastic headband. “I’m embarrassed to say that might have been my second question.”

“Galen’s a little bit of everything,” Polly said. “Ethiopian grandfather and Norwegian grandmother. Scottish-Hawaiian great grandmother on the Ethiopian side. Or something like that. I could never keep it straight. Either that or he kept changing it—his idea of truth was always pretty malleable. He’s crazy exotic looking though, isn’t he? It’s like a genetic fluke. Those turquoise eyes are real, too, by the way. I was sure they were contacts until I started staying over at his place and rummaged through his bathroom.”

“So that was the attraction?” I said. “His exotic good looks?”

Polly reached for a green plastic headband. “No. I mean, it’s hard to miss that, but he’s just one of those people who makes everybody he meets feel like they’re the most interesting person in the entire world. He’s got that laser focus, you know? When I met him, it was like he melted my soul. Although in hindsight, it might possibly have been another body part.”