If getting to her room had been a minefield of distractions, getting to the barn was a labyrinth of people she couldn’t avoid, no matter how much she needed to find Miriam before the auction. Once it started, the Bloomer Face would be on, all her performative defenses up, and she would belong to the crowd. Noelle needed to get to her first, so Miriam knew how loved she was, that she wasn’t facing this all alone.

As she crept past the kitchen, Mr. Matthews appeared carrying a tray loaded with apps, startling her.

“You going to fix things with my girl?” he grunted at her.

She couldn’t ignore Mr. Matthews. “I’m going to try, if I can get to her.”

“You’d better. I already have one kid who ruined things because he couldn’t get his head out of his ass. I don’t need two of you.”

She blinked at him. She didn’t know if she was touched that he considered her one of his kids or horrified that he’d compared her to Levi. Before she could decide, he shooed her off. She was almost at the doors to the great room when a pack of Old Ladies, made up, confusingly, of both Miriam’s antique dealers and her own alcoholics, surrounded her, delaying her again.

“We heard you don’t date,” said Annie the possible witch. “Were you stringing our baby along?”

“We told you not to be a fool,” added the eldest of the sober ladies. “Do we need to spell out for you how that looks? Because you seem to have misinterpreted it.”

“How do you all know so much about my love life?” Noelle wailed, throwing her hands up.

“That Cole boy can’t keep his mouth shut,” another one of them said.

She gritted her teeth. She couldn’t kill Cole, not when she needed Miriam to forgive her. “I’m trying to make things right, but you are literally standing in my way. I need to get to her if I’m going to fix things, which means you need to move.”

They parted before her, Furies with their rage abated, and she finally made it to the barn doors.

As guests walked into the barn for the auction, they passed racks of Cass’s hats and boas for sale. Anyone who had fallen in love with the ornaments at the tree lighting could purchase their own Cass Carrigan accessory. Women in designer party dresses strolled around in vintage cloches and leopard-print capes.

Joshua was charming many a visitor into signing up for updates from the new Carrigan’s site, courtesy of Cole. Sideboards had been set up all around the perimeter, with giant platters of hors d’oeuvres and endless flutes of champagne, donated by a longtime Carrigan’s guest who owned a winery. A vanload of Rosenstein cousins had arrived (with another vanload of pastries) and were mingling with the Bloomers.