However, as I walked around the foyer of the church, surveying the sign-up sheets taped to the tabletops, I realized that something was wrong.

The sign-up sheet for my writing class – Write A Novel Based On Your Parents’ Life – was completely bare. There wasn’t a single name on the list.

I set my bag down next to the table and looked around the room. I saw all of the usual faces, the kids I normally saw in my classes. They were milling around, checking out the offerings and giggling with the other kids.

Maybe it was just early and they hadn’t gotten to my table yet.

So I walked around and did the same thing they were doing, investigating what was going to be offered this session. I had a general idea, since the moms had gotten together a few weeks before to brainstorm class ideas. A kitchen chemistry class. Learn how to knit. Car mechanics for dummies. The history of Chinese Dynasties. Classical music. None of them sounded like classes my kids would want to take. There was an art class being offered that I knew they’d like and a Legos-based architecture class but, beyond that, the pickings seemed to be slim.

So when I returned to my table and saw the mostly blank sign-up sheet, I was surprised. Shocked, actually. Because the only names on the list were Will, Sophie and Grace.

My own kids.

I looked around the room, frowning. Carol Vinford was sitting at a corner table and I made my way over to her.

She looked up and the smile took a fraction longer than it should’ve to reach her face. “Hi, Daisy.”

“Hi,” I said, mustering a smile. I glanced around the room. “Lots of kids. That’s good.”

She nodded. “Absolutely. We’ve got several new families and I think everyone from last session is returning, too.”

“Yeah, I saw that,” I said. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans. “Which makes it even weirder that no one is signed up for my class.”

Carol’s smile flickered. “No one?”

I shook my head. “No one but my own kids.”

“Well, that’s nice that they want to be with you,” she said, her voice flavored with a little too much enthusiasm.

I pulled my hands out of my pockets and folded my arms across my chest. “What’s going on, Carol?”

“Going on?”

“Spill it. You should’ve already been asking me to teach another class by now, begging me to take a second hour,” I said. “The last time that didn’t happen was never.”

The pen in her right hand tapped against the table. “Well, um, maybe the class just isn’t, um, of interest this time around…”

I stared down at her. “Carol. What’s going on?”

The pen tapped quicker against the table top and Carol glanced to her left, then her right before leaning forward of the table. “People are afraid, Daisy.”

“Afraid their parents will be mad?” I asked, not understanding. It wasn’t like I was going to teach the kids how to write tabloid articles. We were going to write stories based on their parents’ lives growing up. They’d learn interview skills, how to write a basic narrative, and hopefully understand how important it was to maintain a connection the past…and record it.

“No,” she said, lowering her voice. “They’re afraid of the Olaf thing.”

I tilted my head, not sure I heard her correctly. “What?”

“They’re all freaked out,” she said. “They know about…the thing…at your house.”

“You mean the body?” I asked dryly. It wasn’t like everyone didn’t already know exactly what ‘thing’ had been recovered from the coal chute. “What the hell does that have to do with taking my class?”

She wrinkled her nose at my choice of words and glanced toward the ceiling, as if the Lord himself might be frowning down on us. “I don’t know. I just know that’s what I’m hearing.”

“From who?” I looked around the room. If people knew what we were discussing, they didn’t indicate it. In fact, no one was even looking in our direction. Which just made everything weirder. I knew I didn’t have a ton of real friends, but most of the moms in the co-op were surface-nice, always ready with a smile or some polite, trivial conversation.

I tried again. “Who did you hear that from?”

Her face colored. “Well, you know, just…everyone. It’s just out there. I know. It’s silly. But you know how people are.”

I set my hands on my hips. “Your kids didn’t sign up.”

The red in her cheeks flushed brighter. “Well, um, they aren’t really writers.”

“You asked me to teach the class,” I reminded her. “And Megan sells her homemade comic books at the fair.”

Her cheeks went to DefCon Red. “I, uh, well, I guess I was wrong about it being popular. And Megan’s more interested in graphic novels.The drawing part.”

I wanted to point out that I’d seen her graphic novels and that the ratio of writing to drawings was about equal. I knew that kid. She liked to write almost as much as she liked to read.

“What exactly do you all think is going to happen?” I asked, resting my hands on the table, more to steady myself than for any other reason. “That I’m going to bring the body in for show and tell? Somehow incorporate a murder into everyone’s story?”

Carol paled just a little. “Well, no, of course not,” she said, shaking her head.

“So then you’re worried that I’m going to what?” I asked, my shoulders tense, my temples beginning to throb. “Kill somebody here?”

She started to say something, then closed her mouth and cast her eyes downward at the table. I swallowed hard. Because I realized then that most people didn’t think it was simply a coincidence that Olaf Stunderson’s body was found in my coal chute. It was beginning to look like they thought I’d put it there.

I pinched the bridge of my nose for a moment, shutting my eyes tightly. “Oh my God. You do think I’m going to kill someone.”

“No, no, no,” Carol insisted. She reached out a hand to touch mine but I pulled away. “We don’t think that at all.”

“Yet everyone’s afraid to put their kids in my class.”

“Daisy, it’s just strange,” she said, trying to give me some sort of sympathetic look. “That’s all. And you know that people talk. They get worked up over something that isn’t there.” She paused and chewed on a fingernail for a second. “But you have to admit, it’s hard to figure out how Olaf got inside your house. If you didn’t let him in.”

“I didn’t,” I said through my locked jaw. “I didn’t let him in and I didn’t do anything to him.”

“I’m sure you didn’t,” she said, her brow furrowed, her voice oozing sympathy and understanding. I just wasn’t sure if it was authentic or not.

I looked around. My kids were still scanning the tables, whispering to one another and their friends, trying to figure out where to place their names. Sophie had Grace by the arm, pulling her back to the Lego table. I knew she would try to talk her into signing up with her. Will was talking to Matt Walters, one of his buddies, pointing at the Chinese dynasty class. I could tell by the expression on his face that he was trying to convince Matt to take something else. Knowing him, probably the class I had signed up to teach.

Part of me wanted to march up to the kids and thrust their coats back into their hands and herd them out of the building. I didn’t want them surrounded by narrow-minded, righteous people who had no problem bestowing judgment based on such skimpy ‘facts.’

But there was another part of me that felt guilty, that didn’t want to take the co-op experience away from them. They genuinely enjoyed their time with their friends, learning in a relaxed classroom environment, a motley group of mixed ages coming together to learn and to share. And I loved that they got a chance to explore new topics, things that we may have never thought about learning at home.

I sighed. I didn’t know if architecture with Legos would balance out being in the middle of a group of people who thought I was capable of murder.