Noelle smiled softly. “None of the three of you were particularly happy children, from what I’ve heard, but here you all are, together and joyous, hooligans throwing away the rules for a moment of pure bliss? She must have been so proud, and so hopeful.”

Miriam sat down on the bed and crossed her legs underneath her. Noelle’s shoulders were bowed, her hands stuffed into her pockets. She looked…uprooted. “How are you really doing,” Miriam asked, “without her?”

Noelle brought her hands up to cover her eyes, and there was silence for a long moment. Miriam patted the bed next to her, and Noelle sank down.

“This is not how I intended to get you in bed for the first time,” Miriam said gently.

Noelle laughed a thin, watery laugh. “I’m not doing well, I’ll tell you that. I keep getting my grief for Cass all tangled up in stuff I thought I’d put away or gotten over about my parents. I didn’t get to see them in their last months, or even years, but I got to see Cass. I got to see Cass every day until the morning I woke up to her gone.” Miriam gasped out a sob, and Noelle laced their fingers together.

“I’m glad you got that,” Miriam said, leaning into Noelle’s warmth and solidness. “I’m a little jealous. I wonder how I’ll ever get the chance to make up for missing the last ten years.”

“You just stay,” Noelle said, putting both arms around Miriam and kissing her curls. “You take care of what she built. You make a wild, hooligan, joyous life that breaks the rules, in her honor.”

“She must have loved the hell out of you. I wish I could have seen that.”

“Why do you say that? Maybe she thought I was good with an evergreen,” Noelle said.

“Look at who she left the farm to. The two nieces she helped raise, the son of her best friends, whom she lived with since the day he was born, and you. She loved you like you were one of us.”

“I think that’s why I was so mad at you, after the will reading. Because I knew I didn’t fit, with the three of you. Some part of me thought you deserved Carrigan’s and I didn’t, like I didn’t have an equal claim.”

“You belong to this place, and it to you,” Miriam said, squeezing her hand. She couldn’t imagine Carrigan’s without Noelle, like the Christmasland had always been saving a seat for her.

Noelle nuzzled her hair. “Thank you. For saying that. When I got here, it felt like Oz, you know? Like it was too good to be true, and eventually I was going to accidentally click my heels and end up back in Kansas,” Noelle admitted.

“Dorothy wanted to go home,” Miriam pointed out.