“She’s killing me at Words with Friends, with all her spare time,” Noelle said, and Elijah laughed before adjusting the sleeves of his argyle sweater carefully. All his movements were precise and measured. Noelle knew him as her rad gay friend who always had a gathering going, the guy who made pub quiz and karaoke and book club happen, but she’d never seen him lawyer before. He cleared his throat.

“I’m so sorry to have missed the funeral—” he began.

“If you had missed your grandmother’s ninetieth birthday for her funeral,” Hannah said, “Cass would never have forgiven you.”

He nodded. “I realize this is absolutely not an ideal, or even reasonable, time to talk about Cass’s will, but I needed you three in the same room. I wasn’t sure if Miriam was staying past the seven days, or I would have waited. My mom sent a casserole,” he added, as if by way of apology. “I put it in the fridge.”

All of this seemed ominous. Why did they need to talk about the will? For years, Cass had said she was leaving Carrigan’s Christmasland to Noelle and Hannah, to continue to run it as they’d been doing. Maybe Cass had left Miriam something as well, some small remembrance?

Hannah ushered them from the great room into the library and waited for everyone to settle.

“We need to discuss the property and business of Carrigan’s Christmasland. Up until last year, her will had, for some time, reflected that she wished to leave the business and land in equal parts to her niece Hannah Rosenstein and her general manager, Noelle Northwood.”

The hackles on the back of Noelle’s neck rose. All her muscles tensed.

“However, recently Cass amended her will to split the aforementioned assets in four equal parts, leaving the third and fourth portions to her niece Miriam Blum and Levi Matthews. It’s my understanding from my last conversation with her that she had not made any of you aware of these changes. Is that true?”

“I’m sorry,” Miriam squeaked, “she did what?!”

Noelle was half out of her chair, her face slack. She looked to Hannah for some idea how to respond. Hannah’s entire body seemed to have frozen into a cartoon version of shock, eyes as wide as plates, hands half raised to her mouth. Noelle scrubbed her face, pulled the ends of her hair straight up, sat down and crossed and uncrossed her arms, stood back up, and leaned against the back of the chair. None of it helped.

They all stared at each other.

“Okay, this is easy, right?” Noelle asked, breathing in and out slowly, trying to stay calm. “Miriam can sell us her portion, and we’ll go on with our lives. Levi doesn’t care what we do.”