Lindsey looked down at the mixture on her hands. Then she glanced at the chicken wire she had been trying to wrap with the soggy newspaper strips.

“I think we can safely conclude that papier-mâché is not my forte.”

Beth lifted up the chicken wire, which Lindsey had molded into the shape of a donkey head.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think you’ve almost got it.”

Lindsey watched while Beth deftly dampened a few dry strips in the bowl of paste and smoothed them over the frame. She carefully folded a few more strips around the ears and managed to fill in the sad gaps that Lindsey had missed.

“There,” she said. “When this dries and you paint it, it will be fabulous.”

“I’d hug you, but we’d probably get stuck together forever,” Lindsey said.

Beth grinned. “Come on, let’s go wash up.”

The bathrooms for the cast and crew were at the back of the theater near the dressing rooms. They could hear Violet’s voice directing the cast on stage mingling with the set builders, who were pounding nails on the loading dock out back.

Lindsey wondered if Sully was here tonight. She hadn’t seen him earlier—not that she was looking for him she reminded herself, refusing to acknowledge any disappointment.

Trying not to touch anything, they walked through the theater with their hands up in the air like surgeons. Beth pushed through the swinging door that led to the ladies’ room with her hip, holding it open for Lindsey. The bathroom was empty, and they each took a sink.

Lindsey had just gotten the last of the goop off of her hands and was reaching for a paper towel when a crash sounded from the stage followed by several shouts. She and Beth exchanged surprised glances and hurried toward the sound of the commotion.

When they managed to push through the curtains at the side of the stage, Lindsey’s heart caught in her throat when she saw Robbie sprawled on the ground with a large tree, saved from a previous play to be used in this show, lying across him.

His left leg was trapped and he was grimacing in pain. Lindsey and Beth hurried forward and knelt beside him while Sully and Ian tried to lift the round tree trunk off of him. As soon as they lifted it, she and Beth tugged Robbie out from underneath it.

Robbie grunted as they pulled. Violet hurried across the stage to join them as Beth and Lindsey gently helped him stand on the wooden stage.

“Robbie, are you all right? What happened?” Violet asked.

“Bloody hell! I was leaning against the tree just like we blocked it, and the next thing I knew it was falling on top of me.”

Sully was kneeling by the base of the tree, checking the bottom of it. When he glanced at Robbie, he frowned.