“That’s good,” I said.

“Yes.” He frowned and shook his head. “I don’t think that poor girl has had many breaks in her life. Let’s hope they can do something for her.”

We fell silent for a few moments.

“And what about the Grangers?” I asked.

“Ah, yes. The Grangers.” He grimaced. “Whose shenanigans proved such a dangerous distraction from the trail of the real culprit. Mrs. Granger has filed for divorce. And now that she’s merely leaving him, and not leaving him for Mr. Spottiswood, Mr. Granger seems willing to accept the situation.”

“Not exactly a happy ending,” I said. “But probably for the best.”

“And they do seem to be in agreement about one thing,” he added. “Neither one of them wants their house—they both want to sell it and split up the proceeds. But the entire downstairs is only partially decorated, so they’re looking for a designer who’s neither dead nor in jail. Do you think any of the crew here would be interested?”

“I’ll put the word out,” I said. “Thanks.”

“So will we see you at the Living Nativity tomorrow?” he asked.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said. “Or the caroling in the town square.”

“Till then,” he said. “Merry Christmas!”

And he and Minerva hurried off—no doubt to buy a few more presents for their grandchildren.

Alice the Quilt Lady bustled up as they were leaving.

“By the way, Meg,” she said. “I asked Randall this, and he said okay as long as it was okay with you. We’re going to put prices on all our quilts. If anyone wants to buy one, they have to wait till the show house is over to take it home, of course.”

“Sounds fine to me,” I said. “And before we let any strangers in here, may I claim that tumbling block quilt?”

“Oh.” She frowned. “I’m afraid that one’s already spoken for.”

I’m sure my face showed how disappointed I was.

“Don’t worry,” she said in a reassuring tone. She looked around to see if anyone else was listening, and then went on, in a lower tone. “Two young gentlemen who were here helping with the decorating saw it, and both thought it would be perfect to give their mother for Christmas. By an odd coincidence, the price we’d put on it was just a little bit less than what they had in their piggy banks. Seems they’ve been looking all over Caerphilly for days, searching for just the right present, and they think she’ll like it almost as well as the pair of winter-white hamsters their daddy won’t let them give her.”

“Wonderful!” I exclaimed.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you,” she said. “But you looked so disappointed.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m very good at pretending to be surprised.”

She headed back to her room. In fact, all the designers were returning to their rooms to do a few bits of last-minute primping. Most of them were spinning their wheels, though, having raced to get everything ready and now finding nothing to do with themselves.

“Probably a good idea to leave now,” Sarah said finally. “At this point, I’m more apt to mess things up than improve them. And they’ll kick us out when the judges get here, right?”

One by one, the others made the same decision. Eventually, Mother and Ivy were the only designers left in the house. Ivy was upstairs, finishing her Snow Queen mural, and Mother was watching Tomás and Mateo doing something with strings of lights.

“Half an hour till the judges get here,” I called out.

“I’ll be ready,” Ivy called back.

I strolled into the living room. Tomás and Mateo were dashing madly up and down their tall ladders. Whatever they were doing with the lights—more like a mesh of lights than a string—they had started on either side of the Christmas tree and were about to meet over the fireplace.

I could hear Randall’s voice outside.

“Step this way, folks,” he was saying.

“I’m just going to slip out the back,” Ivy said. “I’m all paint-smeared and messy.”

She looked fine, as usual. I gave her a quick hug. She seemed surprised, but not upset.

“We couldn’t have done it without you,” I said. “Any of it.”

She smiled and left.

“No, the designers won’t be watching you while you’re judging,” I heard Randall saying on the steps. “We’ll just give them a minute or two to leave.”

“¡Fin!” Tomás exclaimed.

Mateo scrambled down his ladder, raced over to the foot of the Christmas tree, and plugged something in.

The lights came on. Not just the conventional lights on the Christmas tree, but great swathes of tiny fairy lights, clustered thickly all along the ceiling and then thinning out to one or two lights halfway down the walls. And all the lights twinkled, and thanks to the metallic gold paint on all the curtains and furniture and the several tons of glitter the kids had used on all the canvas murals and the Christmas ornaments, the whole room twinkled along with it.

“It’s beautiful.” I said. I stopped myself from saying anything else, like “I know it’s not the room you’d planned.” The room was beautiful. Full stop. And it looked like exactly what it was—a room decorated by a bunch of different people, some of them with a flair for design, and the rest with just a whole lot of love and Christmas spirit.

In fact, while I would never say this to Mother, I liked this room better. I found myself thinking of it as the real nightingale to the beautiful but artificial clockwork bird that was her original room.

Mother took a long, slow look around.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s beautiful. Let’s go out through the garage.”

As we hurried through the breakfast room, the kitchen, and the laundry room, we heard Randall’s key in the front door.

“Step right in, ladies and gentlemen.”

Mother and I stopped in the garage and took a deep breath.

“I need to get in here early tomorrow morning to tidy up,” I said, looking around.

“Will people be coming in here?” Mother asked.

“Well, given that every shop in Caerphilly has been selling the tickets for weeks, probably not a lot of people,” I said. “But we’re going to have a ticket seller here, just in case.”

“Then let’s clean up tonight,” Mother said. “It won’t take long.”

Normally, Mother’s only involvement in cleaning was supervisory. But tonight she seemed to have been inspired by the events of the day and pitched in with a will. We swept, tidied, filled black plastic bags with garbage, stacked construction supplies for Randall to haul off in the morning, and arranged everything else neatly on the workbench.

But she still seemed pensive.

“A penny for them,” I said.

“I was just wishing I had a picture of my room before that horrible girl attacked it,” she said. “I was so tired when I left yesterday afternoon that I didn’t take any—I was planning to ask someone to do it this morning.”

“I have a few,” I said.

“Oh, I knew you were taking them all along,” she said. “And those will be lovely to have. But it finally came together yesterday afternoon, after you left.”

“And I took a lot of pictures last night,” I said. “When I first came in. Before Jessica arrived.”

Her face lit up. I turned on my phone, opened up the picture album, and handed it to her.

I finished up the last few bits of tidying as she studied the photos.

“Yes,” she said. “It was just the way I planned it.”

“I’m sorry that no one else will get to see it,” I said.

“I can show them the pictures,” she replied. “You are going to send me those pictures, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“It doesn’t bother me as much now,” she said. “It’s always silly to fall in love with a room—especially a show house room that you know from the start will only last a few weeks. But now that we have pictures, I don’t feel nearly as bad.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“We should get back to your house,” she said. “Dahlia has a special dinner planned. She’s cooking all the things she wanted to have on Christmas eve or Christmas day but didn’t have room for.”