Kathy kept talking faster, the stories Connie told piling onto the things Kathy had been able to confirm later. Moment by moment Kathy’s voice sounded colder. She might have talked for five minutes or five hours, Francesca had no idea. Francesca couldn’t stand there anymore and couldn’t move. She concentrated on the popping of the firecrackers in the front yard, the sound of children’s laughter. Later, she noticed those sounds were gone, but she hadn’t heard them stop. For a while she concentrated on how it felt to have snow melting in her hair. She tried to look at her sister and also past her, to the wintertime remnants of her grandfather’s beloved garden, where he died, happy, at peace.

“… and that’s why Aunt Kay became Catholic and why she goes to Mass every day and sometimes twice. They’re on their knees trying to pray their evil murdering husbands’ souls out of hell, just like Ma ought to do for-”

And then just like that Francesca was looking down at her sister, crumpled in the snow, bleeding again, this time from her nose. Her cigarette was still in her mouth. Her glasses had flown off her face and landed a few feet away. Francesca’s right hand was still balled into a fist, and it hurt. Kathy stirred. “Lunatic,” she muttered.

A tide of rage roared in Francesca’s ears. She kicked Kathy in the ribs. It wasn’t a direct hit, but it was enough to make Kathy grunt in pain.

Francesca turned and ran.

Francesca lay on her side on the edge of a double bed, in a darkened room that had once belonged to Uncle Fredo, who’d lived here with his parents until he was thirty. He’d been in Las Vegas for ten years, but the décor-dark drapes and wood paneling, a faded map of Sicily, and a fly-fishing painting that looked like it came from Sears-seemed unaltered, as if Grandma Carmela expected him to move back in any day.

After what might have been hours or minutes, Francesca heard someone in the bathroom across the hall, banging and running water in a rhythm that was unmistakably Kathy’s. Francesca heard Kathy’s footsteps, heard her get into the other side of the bed. She did not have to look to know that Kathy was facing the other wall, lying on her side, a mirror image of Francesca except for the pajamas. Francesca wore nightgowns.

For a long time they lay there. If Francesca hadn’t spent thousands of nights in the same bedroom as Kathy, she’d have had every reason to presume she was asleep. “Why did you say I was pregnant?” Francesca said.

“What are you talking about?”

“When we first got here. When you ran to the car like you were actually glad to see me.”

Again, anyone else might have thought Kathy had fallen asleep. “Ohhhhh,” she finally said. “That. Don’t you remember? When we dropped you off at school, the last thing you said to me was to not wreck my eyes reading. I said don’t get pregnant. You got here and the first thing you do, with your remarkable grasp of the self-evident, is tell me I have glasses. So I-”

“Other way around. You said don’t get pregnant and I said don’t wreck your eyes.”

“I stand corrected. So are you?”

“No,” Francesca finally said. “Of course not.”

“You haven’t? At all?”

“Why? Have you?”

“No,” Kathy said, so quickly Francesca figured the answer was yes.

They did not talk about what had happened behind the floodlights-the stories or the punch or even the fate of Kathy’s eyeglasses. They stayed on opposite hips on opposite sides of the bed. They stayed awake long enough to hear their grandmother downstairs, beginning to fry sausage, which meant that it was probably about four-thirty. Eventually, they did fall asleep. Eventually, as sleeping people will, they moved. Inexorably, each was drawn toward the center of the bed. They entwined their arms and legs. Their long hair seemed blended together. They even breathed as one, each exhaling on the neck of the other.

“Oh, honey,” Francesca whispered in the darkness, presuming her sister was asleep. “I can’t believe what I did. What I did to you.”

“Maybe I am you,” Kathy murmured, and they, as one, went back to sleep.

Francesca awoke to the piercing shrieks of children and the murmurs of herding adults. She sat up. Snow was falling. Downstairs, the pitch of the din grew higher. Over it all rose Grandma Carmela’s deep call of Buon Natale! Someone had arrived. Francesca hurried down the narrow back stairs. The kitchen was full of food but empty. She heard two sets of feet coming her way and stopped so she wouldn’t get smacked in the face with the kitchen door. The door flew open. Kathy and Billy were both showered and dressed, grinning like they’d just caught Santa Claus red-handed and commandeered the sleigh. Billy was decked out in a red blazer, a green tie, and a shirt so white it put snow to shame. Unfrayed cuffs. The white of divinity fudge.

“You’ll never guess who just drove up with your uncle,” Billy said.

“Which uncle?” She smoothed her ratty hair. She hadn’t even brushed her teeth.

“Which one do you think?” Kathy said.

“Mike.” They both came to get me because they were competing to tell me this news.

“Oh, please.” Kathy rolled her eyes. “Uncle Fredo.” She wasn’t wearing the glasses. She had a black eye, but not much of one. A person would have to be looking for it.

“C’mon, guess,” Billy said.

“I give up,” Francesca said. “Santa Claus.”

“Weirder,” Kathy said.

“Who’s weirder than Santa Claus?”

“Deanna Dunn,” Billy said.

Francesca rolled her eyes. On their last date, they’d gone to see that Deanna Dunn picture where she has a deaf baby and her husband dies at the end fighting the Great Chicago Fire. “Just tell me.”

“I’m serious as a judge.” He held up his hand, ready to be sworn in. Even at twenty-two, dressed in a red blazer on Christmas morning, Billy was easy to picture as a judge.

“He’s not kidding,” Kathy said. “It’s Deanna Dunn. Cross my heart.” Which she actually did. “I’d actually heard a rumor that she and Uncle Fredo were dating, but I didn’t-”

Just then the kitchen door swung open, and trailing in Grandma Carmela’s wake came Uncle Fredo and Deanna Dunn. In person, Deanna Dunn’s head seemed gigantic. She was very tall and more beautiful than pretty. On her left hand was a diamond ring as proportionately absurd as her head.

“Miss Dunn!” Francesca said.

“What’d I tell you?” Kathy said, even though it had been Billy who’d told her. Kathy liked foreign movies. Deanna Dunn was someone she made fun of. But the way Kathy was looking at her now, she could have been the secretary of the Deanna Dunn Fan Club.

“Please, darling. Call me Deanna.” Her accent was neither American nor British and in person sounded remarkably unlike human speech.

She took Francesca’s hand.

Deanna Dunn, so magnetic Francesca felt dizzy. Yesterday in Jacksonville had only in the most indirect way unleashed last night’s exchange with Kathy. It had nothing to do with the surreal sight of Deanna Dunn in this old, familiar kitchen. Francesca’s life had been seized by dream-and-nightmare logic.

The rich boy Francesca loved calmly served black coffee to a two-time Oscar-winning actress. Francesca’s grandmother sang a Christmas carol-not a hymn, but one about Santa Claus. Francesca’s dead father had been both a murderer and murdered. Uncle Fredo slouched against the doorframe, staring at his shoes. He looked like he’d eaten some bad clams. Behind him, as if someone had given a signal, came an explosion of flashbulbs. Francesca expected to see men with visors and big cameras jostling for position, shooting them as if from the edge of the red carpet. Fredo didn’t even look up.

From the next room, over shouted thank-yous and the shredding of gift wrap, came the voice of her mother-the voice that had been lying to Francesca all her life.