Sonya brought them dessert. On the house. She said the maître d’ had insisted. An elegant bowl of berries for Aunt Evie and two ice cream sundaes for them, two scoops of vanilla ice cream, lightly sprinkled with toasted almonds, and abundantly drizzled with hot Nutella sauce.

Tess watched as “Max” ignored the almonds and the scoops of ice cream and went about carefully scraping all the Nutella sauce, bit by bit, off the ice cream as if it was award winning chocolate fudge sauce and ate it very, very slowly, licking the spoon.

“This is really delicious,” said “the person who used to be Max.”

Max hated Nutella, or at least he used to . . .

Aunt Evie noticed it, too.

Aunt Evie wondered if Tess knew that while she was changing into her denim dress for dinner, Max had whispered to Aunt Evie, “I have a concern about Tess, Aunt Evie.”

That was how he’d put it which was odd itself but also, it was an unspoken rule—they never complained about each other behind the other one’s back.

“She’s acting very peculiarly,” he’d said. “She’s having nightmares. Very very vivid ones,” he said. “And, she thinks she has a migraine and she’s seeing spots.”

If one of them was having a problem, they’d both come and talk to her. Or just have a fight in front of her. They didn’t speak behind each other’s backs. It seemed to violate the sacred oath of the Pinkie swear. Aunt Evie exhaled. Maybe they were just becoming teenage.

“How’s your head, Tess?” asked Aunt Evie, when she saw Tess squinting her eyes as she looked across the room.

Tess gave “the person who used to be Max” an evil look, because she hadn’t told Aunt Evie that she’d had a headache. “Fine, Aunt Evie,” she said cheerfully. “I think I was just hungry and thirsty.”

“That’s good!” said Aunt Evie. “My friend Bobbie rang up,” she said, “asked if I’d run down the road to a pub for a holiday drink.” She snortled, which is something short of a laugh but cheerful.

“Is Bobbie a boy or a girl?” asked Tess.

“Girl,” said Aunt Evie. “Bestie. But we haven’t seen each other for a while. I might be late,” she said.

Aunt Evie was definitely looking forward to a couple of hours of grown-up time. And Tess, for one, thought that was great, that Aunt Evie was going out with a friend.

“Have an excellent time,” said Tess. “We’ll be just fine.” But as she said it, Tess realized she had no idea if that was in fact going to be true . . .

~ CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE ~

trying to pretend that everything is normal