I was relieved that the rest of the ride downtown passed without further incident. And after the ride over, the actual visit to Santa was delightfully uneventful. These days, the Caerphilly Volunteer Fire Department hosted Santa’s local stay. They had built a large Styrofoam igloo at the back of the vacant engine bay and hauled in a brightly painted red sleigh to serve as Santa’s throne. If we ever raised enough money for a much needed fourth fire engine, they might need to find Santa a new home, but in the meantime, the kids—and grown-ups—enjoyed getting tours of the fire engines while waiting their turn on Santa’s lap. And everyone seemed to enjoy the occasional days when the firemen got a call and Santa clapped on his fire hat and took off driving the ladder truck.

Michael’s fellow firemen greeted him with enthusiasm. Perhaps all the times the boys had visited their daddy during his volunteer shifts at the fire station helped keep them from being scared of Santa this time. After staring at the burly, bearded man in red for a few moments, Jamie turned to me.

“Is that a real beard?” he stage-whispered.

“Of course it is,” Santa said. “Want to give it a tug?”

Both boys were charmed by the idea, and after each had given Santa’s beard a few relatively gentle tugs, they settled down to the business of reiterating their Christmas requests—no new major demands, to my relief—and having their pictures taken. Michael and all three grandparents drained their camera and cell phone batteries taking endless pictures—Jamie with Santa. Josh with Santa. Both boys with Santa. Both boys with Santa and various configurations of parents and grandparents. The boys climbing on the fire trucks. The boys wearing firefighter hats, with and without Fireman Santa.

At one point I noticed Josh in deep conversation with Santa, so I inched a little closer to eavesdrop.

“No, Josh,” Santa was saying. “I don’t understand it myself, but for some reason mommies don’t usually like getting boa constrictors for Christmas.”

“So you think a basketball hoop is a better idea?”

“To tell you the truth, Josh,” Santa began.

I slipped away, reassured that St. Nick would save me from hoops and snakes. And reminded myself again to drop some hints for things the boys might enjoy giving me. As soon as I thought of some ideas.

Meanwhile, Mother was quite taken with the deep, glossy red of the sleigh, and I looked around several times to see her taking pictures of it with her camera and digging into her purse for fabric samples to hold against it.

“I hate to be a party pooper,” I said finally. “But I’m getting hungry, and Grandma and I have to get back to the show house.”

We had a quick lunch at Muriel’s Diner, home of what had now been certified, by last year’s fair, as the best apple and cherry pies in the state. And then Michael dropped Mother and me back at the show house, and took the boys off for naps so they could stay up late for tonight’s show. I suspected he and his mother and Dad were also planning on a nap.

Mother and I were made of sterner stuff.

She returned to inspecting red paint. I was half expecting her to ask me to drive her back to the fire station to match her samples against Santa’s sleigh. Or worse, send Mateo on the thankless errand of getting the local hardware store to match the sleigh’s paint. But after another quarter hour of dithering, she made a decision. The walls would be resplendent in “Red Obession.”

After dealing with a few crises that had popped up while I was gone, I decided the only way I’d get any work done was to retire to the garage. It was a little chilly, but at least it was out of the way. I’d begun to realize that if I was underfoot, the designers would come to me with every little hangnail-sized problem, but if I was in the garage, it took a much larger problem to make them take the trouble of hunting me down.

Though I did walk through the house every hour or so. Pocket door construction was going nicely. Mother and Eustace were positively cooing at each other as they watched Tomás doing whatever they had agreed to have him do to the archway. Mateo and Randall’s workmen had almost finished returning the master suite to the condition it had been in before the murder—and for that matter, before the flood. Sarah’s room looked back to normal, though she had a disconcerting tendency to jerk open drawers, look under chair cushions, and search every other nook and cranny of the room, all of which she’d already searched at least a dozen times. And to my relief, Ivy had begun working on her “Nightingale” mural in the part of the upstairs hallway that was visible from the great room below. Mother had been counting on that as a key part of her decoration.

I walked into the dining room to make sure the workmen had pruned Linda’s portion of the Christmas tree, and that she was happy with the results.

Linda was sitting on one of her flowered chairs, crying, quietly but steadily. A small heap of tissues lay on the floor on the right side of her chair. As I watched, she dropped the tissue she was using with the others and took a fresh one from the box.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

I took a few steps toward her but paused when she held up her hand like a traffic cop ordering cars to stop.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “This is just an upsetting time for all of us.”

I nodded and watched as she added another tissue to the pile.

“It’s a very small world, you know,” Linda said. “The design community.”

I’d figured that out weeks ago. Coming in to take charge of organizing I’d felt like the new kid starting school in the middle of a semester.

“We all fight over the same clients. The same vendors. Read the same publications. Follow—or try to break free from—the same trends.”

“The designers in the show house all seem pretty individual to me,” I said.

“That’s because it’s a small town show house,” she said. “Half of these people wouldn’t get into a sophisticated big city event. Sarah maybe, and your mother, and Eustace. But not Violet and Vermillion or those nice ladies with the quilts. And not me.”

Maybe that was supposed to be my cue to reassure her. But I didn’t think I could do it and fool her.

“And Clay?” I asked. “Would he have made the cut?”

“God, I hope not!” She plucked another tissue from the box with such a violent tug that it fell to the floor. “He was a horrible person.”

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“I’m sure somebody already has,” she replied. “Did anyone tell you about the hilarious prank Clay played on me?”

“No one’s told me about Clay doing anything hilarious,” I said. “Or even mildly amusing. Remember, I’m a stranger in this strange land of Decoratorville. What nasty prank did he play?”

She looked up, assessed me for a few minutes, then closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair, as if surrendering.

“I’ve been widowed for ten years,” she said. “No family. And a couple of years ago, I decided to try one of those online dating sites. And I didn’t like it at first. I was almost going to close my account. Then I met this man who seemed really nice and normal. He was a doctor. A widower. Fiftyish. We spent hours online talking. We bonded. I told him things…”

Her voice trailed off and she shook her head.

“We finally agreed to meet in person,” she continued. “At a restaurant in Richmond. I was so nervous. I must have tried on a dozen outfits before deciding on one. I’m not young or skinny.” She lifted her chin defiantly. “But I look pretty good for my age. I take care of myself.”

“Absolutely,” I said. And I meant it. I might not like her taste in décor and clothes, but I had a hard time imagining that the fiftyish widowed doctor wouldn’t be pleased to see her across the table.

“I waited in that restaurant for an hour and a half,” she said. “Drinking the water and nibbling the bread and eventually ordering a glass of wine so the waiters wouldn’t think I was just some crazy person taking up space. And when I finished my wine, the waiter brought me another glass, saying it was from one of the other customers.”