BEGINNING AT MIDNIGHT on December 1, Francine’s house was decorated like she was entering a Most Festive House on the Planet contest, and the TV was never turned on because she played Christmas music from the moment I got up for school all the way until bedtime. But I was mostly out of the house, at school or Salishwood or at Blackbird or at Kira’s house or with Sean—and so I got just enough of the music to love it instead of being driven nuts by it. A lot of Dean Martin. Nat King Cole. “Old guys who know how to do ‘Jingle Bells’ right,” she said. I did homework to it, fell asleep to it, woke up to it, and to hot cider and cinnamon rolls and apple strudel and a hundred dozen sugar cookies for the women’s shelter.

Her volunteering there was a big deal in her everyday life. Normally I could not care less about what the foster parents did. Besides fostering. But Francine—what had her life been before now?

I was determined to not ask. To stop wondering. Wouldn’t matter soon, anyway.

She said to me one morning as she set a plate of Swedish pancakes with warm lingonberry jam before me, “Listen. If I ever get diagnosed with a terminal illness, like with a time limit, months to live? It is Christmas. Get out the decorations and keep them up until the end. I will die at Christmastime. You got that?”

As if I’d always be there with her to make those decisions together. To unpack the tinsel and string the lights the way she had, around every single window in the house, including the bedrooms.

I just nodded, my mouth overfull of pancakes and jam.

Maybe even more festive than Francine’s house were Kira’s brightened spirits—she was back in art class.

“Mr. Taxera says I can make up quizzes and as much studio work as I can over winter break so I’ll be ready for next semester,” she had whisper-squealed during the breakfast rush at Blackbird. “But the very, very best part is, he came in last week and saw the mural and he’s letting me paint a mural on the classroom wall!”

“Oh, Kira.” The long line of tourists at the counter had to deal with some major jumping-around excitement. “You are the Pacific Northwest’s Diego Rivera!”

She made a face. “That guy was a dick. I’ll be Marion Greenwood.”

“No. You’ll be Kira Aoyama, better than any of them.”