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  For my editor, Jen Enderlin.

  And for my agent, Helen Breitwieser.

  Thank you both—so much more than I could ever say—for believing in me.

  one

  I was the one dancing with Max when it happened.

  No one ever remembers who it was now, but it was me.

  Actually, pretty much everything that night was me. Max and Babette had gone on a last-minute, two-week, second-honeymoon cruise around the boot of Italy that they’d found for a steal—and the return date just happened to be two days before Max’s sixtieth birthday party—smack in the middle of summer.

  Babette had worried that she couldn’t book a trip with an end date so close to the party, but I stopped her. “I’ve got this. I’ll get everything ready.”

  “I’m not sure you realize what a big undertaking a party like this is,” Babette said. “We’ve got the whole school coming. Three hundred people—maybe more. It’s a huge job.”

  “I think I can handle it.”

  “But it’s your summer,” Babette said. “I want you to be carefree.”

  “And I want you,” I said, pointing at her, “to take a dirt-cheap second honeymoon to Italy.”

  I didn’t have to twist their arms. They went.

  And I was happy to take charge of the party. Max and Babette were not technically my parents—but they were the nearest thing I had. My mom died when I was ten, and let’s just say my dad was not my closest relative.

  Actually … technically he was my closest relative.

  But we weren’t close.

  Plus, I didn’t have any siblings—just a few scattered cousins, but no family anywhere nearby. God, now that I’m laying it out like this, I have to add: no boyfriend, either. Not for a long time. Not even any pets.

  I did have friends, though. Lest I make myself sound too sad. Especially my friend Alice. Six feet tall, friendly, and relentlessly positive Alice, who was a math specialist and wore a T-shirt with a math joke on it every day to work.

  The first day I met her, her shirt said, NERD SQUAD.

  “Great shirt,” I said.

  She said, “Usually, I wear math jokes.”

  “Is there such a thing as math jokes?” I asked.

  “Wait and see.”

  To sum up: Yes. There are more math jokes in the world than you can possibly imagine. And Alice had a T-shirt for all of them. Most of which I didn’t understand.

  We had almost none of the same interests, Alice and me, but it didn’t matter. She was a tall, sporty, mathy person, and I was the opposite of all those things. I was an early riser, and she was a night owl. She wore the exact same version of Levi’s and T-shirts to work every day, and every day I put together some wildly different concoction of clothes. She read spy novels—exclusively—and I read anything I could get my hands on. She played on an intramural beach volleyball team, for Pete’s sake.

  But we were great friends.

  I was lucky to be a librarian at a very special, very legendary elementary school on Galveston Island called the Kempner School—and not only did I adore my job, and the kids, and the other teachers, I also lived in Babette and Max Kempner’s garage apartment. Though, “garage apartment” doesn’t quite capture it. The real term was “carriage house” because it had once been the apartment above the stables.

  Back when horses-and-buggies were a thing.

  Living with Max and Babette was kind of like living with the king and queen. They had founded Kempner, and they’d run it together all these years, and they were just … beloved. Their historic mansion—that’s right: real estate is super cheap in Galveston—was just blocks from school, too, so teachers were constantly stopping by, hanging out on the porch, helping Max in his woodshop. Max and Babette were just the kind of people other people just wanted to be near.

  The point is, I was glad to do something wonderful for them.

  They did wonderful things for me all the time.

  In fact, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a rare opportunity to really astonish them with the greatest party ever. I started a Pinterest board, and I went through magazines for décor ideas. I got so excited, I even called up their daughter Tina to see if she might like to do the project together.

  Ironically, their daughter Tina was one of the rare people in town who didn’t hang out at Max and Babette’s all the time. So I didn’t know her all that well.

  Also: she didn’t like me.

  I suspected she thought I was trying to take her place.

  Fair enough. She wasn’t totally wrong.

  “Why are you decorating for my dad’s party?” she said, when I called—her voice tight.

  “You know,” I said, “just—timing.” It’s such a disorienting thing when people openly dislike you. It made me a little tongue-tied around her. “They’re on that trip…”

  I waited for a noise of recognition.

  “To Italy…”

  Nothing.

  “So I just offered to get the party done for them.”

  “They should have called me,” she said.

  They hadn’t called her because they knew she wouldn’t have time. She had one of those husbands who kept her very busy. “They wanted to,” I lied. “I just jumped in and offered so fast … they never got the chance.”

  “How unusual,” she said.

  “But that’s why I’m calling. I thought maybe we could do it together.”

  I could feel her weighing her options. Planning her own father’s sixtieth birthday party was kind of her rightful job … but now, if she said yes, she’d have no way to avoid me.

  “I’ll pass,” she said.

  And so the job was mine.

  Alice wound up helping me, because Alice was the kind of person who was always happiest when she was helping. Babette had been thinking streamers and cake, but I couldn’t leave it at that. I wanted to go big. This was Max! Principal, founder, living legend—and genuinely good-hearted human. His whole philosophy was, Never miss a chance to celebrate. He celebrated everybody else all the time.

  Dammit, it was time to celebrate the man himself.

  I wanted to do something epic. Magical. Unforgettable.

  But Babette had left an envelope on her kitchen table labeled “For Party Supplies,” and when I opened it up, it held a budget of sixty-seven dollars. Many of them in ones.

  Babette was pretty thrifty.

  That’s when Alice suggested we call the maintenance guys to see if we could borrow the school’s twinkle lights from the storage facility. When I told them what we were up to, they said, “Hell, yes,” and offered to hang everything for me. “Do you want the Christmas wreaths, too?” they asked.

  “Just the lights, thank you.”

  See that? Everybody loved Max.

  The more people found out what we were doing, the more everybody wanted in. It seemed like half the adults in this town had been Max
’s students, or had him for a baseball coach, or volunteered with him for beach cleanups.

  I started getting messages on Facebook and texts I didn’t recognize: The florist on Winnie Street wanted to donate bouquets for the tables, and the lady who owned the fabric shop on Sealy Avenue wanted to offer some bolts of tulle to drape around the room, and a local seventies cover band wanted to play for free. I got offers for free food, free cookies, free booze, and free balloons. I got texts from a busker who wanted to do a fire-eating show, an ice sculptor who wanted to carve a bust of Max for the buffet table, and a fancy wedding photographer who offered to capture the whole night—no charge.

  I said yes to them all.

  And then I got the best message of all. A phone call from a guy offering me the Garten Verein.

  I’m not saying Max and Babette wouldn’t have been happy with the school cafeteria—Max and Babette were pretty good at being happy anywhere—but the Garten Verein was one of the loveliest buildings in town. An octagonal, Victorian dancing pavilion built in 1880, now painted a pale green with white gingerbread. Nowadays it was mostly a venue for weddings and fancy events—a not-cheap venue. But several of Max’s former students owned the building, and they offered it for free.

  “Kempner class of ’94 for the win!” the guy on the phone said. Then he added, “Never miss a chance to celebrate.”

  “Spoken like a true fan of Max,” I said.

  “Give him my love, will ya?” the Garten Verein guy said.

  Max and Babette were too jet-lagged by the time they came home to even stop by school, so the change of venue took them completely by surprise. That evening, I met them on their front porch—Babette in her little round specs and salt-and-pepper pixie cut, forgoing her signature paint-splattered overalls for a sweet little Mexican-embroidered cotton dress, and Max looking impossibly dapper in a seersucker suit and a pink bow tie.

  They held hands as we walked, and I found myself thinking, Relationship goals.

  Instead of walking two blocks west, toward school, I led them north.

  “You know we’re going the wrong way, right?” Max stage-whispered to me.

  “Don’t you just know everything?” I teased, stalling.

  “I know where my damn school is,” Max said, but his eyes were smiling.

  “I think,” I said then, “if you stick with me, you’ll be glad you did.”

  And that’s when the Garten Verein came into view.

  An arc of balloons swayed over the iron entrance gate. Alice—amateur French horn player and faculty sponsor of the fifth-grade jazz band—was already there, just inside the garden, and as soon as she saw us, she gave them the go-sign to start honking out a rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Kids filled the park, and parents stood holding glass champagne flutes, and as soon as Max arrived, they all cheered.

  As Max and Babette took in the sight, she turned to me. “What did you do?”

  “We did not go over budget,” I said. “Much.”

  We stepped into the garden, and their daughter Tina arrived just behind us—looking svelte and put-together, as always, with her third-grader, Clay, holding her hand. Babette and Max pulled them both into a hug, and then Max said, “Where’s Kent Buckley?”

  Tina’s husband was the kind of guy everybody always called by his first and last name. He wasn’t ever just “Kent.” He was always “Kent Buckley.” Like it was all one word.

  Tina turned and craned her neck to look for her husband, and I took a second to admire how elegant her dark hair looked in that low bun. Elegant, but mean. That was Tina.

  “There,” she said, pointing. “Conference call.”

  There he was, a hundred feet back, conducting some kind of meeting on the Bluetooth speaker attached to his ear—pacing the sidewalk, gesticulating with his arms, and clearly not too pleased.

  We all watched him for a second, and it occurred to me that he probably thought he looked like a big shot. He looked kind of proud of how he was behaving, like we’d be impressed that he had the authority to yell at people. Even though, in truth, especially with that little speaker on his ear, he mostly just looked like he was yelling at himself.

  A quick note about Kent and Tina Buckley. You know how there are always those couples where nobody can figure out what the wife is doing with the husband?

  They were that couple.

  Most of the town liked Tina—or at least extended their affection for her parents to her—and it was a fairly common thing for people to wonder out loud what a great girl like that was doing with a douchey guy like him. I’m not even sure it was anything specific that folks could put their finger on. He just had a kind of uptight, oily, snooty way about him that people on the island just didn’t appreciate.

  Of course, Tina had never been “a great girl” to me.

  Even now, beholding the party I’d so lovingly put together, she never even acknowledged me—just swept her eyes right past, like I wasn’t even there. “Let’s go in,” she said to her mom. “I need a drink.”

  “How long can you stay?” Babette asked her in a whisper, as they started toward the building.

  Tina stiffened, as though her mother had just criticized her. “About two hours. He’s got a video conference at eight.”

  “We could drive you home, if you wanted to stay later,” Max said then.

  Tina looked like she wanted to stay. But then she glanced Kent Buckley’s way and shook her head. “We’ll need to get back.”

  Everybody was setting out their words carefully and monitoring their voices to keep everything hyper pleasant, but there were some emotional land mines in this conversation, for sure.

  Of course, the biggest emotional land mine was the party itself. When we stepped inside and Max and Babette beheld the twinkle lights, and the seventies band in their bell-bottoms, and the decorations, and the mountains of food, Babette turned to me with a gasp of delight and said, “Sam! It’s magnificent!”

  In the background, I saw Tina’s face go dark.

  “It wasn’t just me,” I said. And then it just kind of popped out: “Tina helped. We did it together.”

  I’d have to apologize to Alice later. I panicked.

  Babette and Max turned toward Tina for confirmation, and she gave them a smile as stiff as a Barbie doll’s.

  “And, really, the whole town’s responsible,” I went on, trying to push past the moment. “When word got out we were planning your sixtieth birthday party, everybody wanted to help. We got deluged, didn’t we, Tina?”

  Tina’s smile got stiffer as her parents turned back to her. “We got deluged,” she confirmed.

  That’s when Max reached out his long arms and pulled us both into a bear hug. “You two are the best daughters a guy could have.”

  He was joking, of course, but Tina stiffened, then broke out of the hug. “She is not your daughter.”

  Max’s smile was relaxed. “Well, no. That’s true. But we’re thinking about adopting her.” He gave me a wink.

  “She doesn’t need to be adopted,” Tina said, all irritation. “She’s a grown woman.”

  “He’s kidding,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me what he’s doing.”

  But nothing was going to kill Max’s good mood. He was already pivoting toward Babette, snaking his arm around her waist and pulling her toward the dance floor. “Your mama and I need to show these whippersnappers how it’s done,” he called back as he walked. Then he rotated to point at Tina. “You’re next, lady! Gotta grab you before you turn into a pumpkin.”

  Tina and I stood at a hostile distance as we watched her parents launch into a very competent set of dance moves. I spotted Alice across the way and wished she would come stand next to me for some emotional backup, but she made her way to the food table, instead.

  Was Alice’s party attire jeans and a math T-shirt?

  It was.

  The shirt said, WHY IS 6 AFRAID OF 7? And then, on the back: BECAUSE 7 8 9.

  I was just about to wal
k over and join her, when Tina said, “You didn’t have to lie to them.”

  I shrugged. “I was trying to be nice.”

  “I don’t need you to be nice.”

  I shrugged again. “Can’t help it.”

  Confession: did I want Tina to like me?

  I absolutely did.

  Would I have loved to be a part of their family—a real part of it? I would. Even if the most Tina could ever be was my bitchy big sister, I’d take it. My own family was kind of … nonexistent.

  I wanted so badly to belong somewhere.

  I wasn’t trying to steal her family. But I would have given anything to join it.

  But Tina wasn’t too keen on that idea, which seemed a little selfish because she was never around, anyway. She and Kent Buckley were always off hosting charity galas and living a fancy, ritzy social life. You’d think she could share a little.

  But no.

  She didn’t want them, particularly, but she didn’t want anyone else to have them, either.

  She resented my presence. She resented my existence. And she was determined to keep it that way. All I could think of was to just keep on being nice to her until the day she finally just gave up, held out her arms for a defeated hug, and said, “Fine. I give up. Get in here.”

  It was going to happen someday. I knew it was. Maybe.

  But probably not tonight.

  After a very long pause, I said something I thought she’d like. “They adore you, you know. And Clay. They talk about you both all the time.”

  But she just turned toward me with an expression that fell somewhere between offense and outrage.

  “Did you just try to tell me how my own parents feel about me?”

  “Um…”

  “Do you honestly believe that you’re qualified to comment on my relationship with my own parents—the people who not only brought me into this world but also spent thirty years raising me?”

  “I…”

  “How long have you known them?”

  “Four years.”

  “So you’re a librarian who moved into their garage four years ago—”

  “It’s a carriage house,” I muttered.