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over her shoulder just as the Wittmores got into their car. A quick glance and then she turned back to talk to someone. That was the last time Paula had laid eyes on a Riley.
    Rowan’s other grandmother. Not that Izzy knew that.
    She would go home. She and Rowan.
    Her mother was ill: Audra was ill. Old Tex, the dog—he would be sixteen, seventeen? She pondered that, considered that he might be dead. The house would be empty.
    Haven Woods, a million miles away from Blondie’s, St. Mary’s Academy; a million miles away from where she was now.
    A million miles away.

TWO
    What was I thinking? Izzy Riley was thinking how long the day had been already, wondering how much longer are these people going to stay?
    It was a full house. Of course it was. It was a monumental occasion, the dispensing of one of their own.
    The three oldest of them all, Aggie, Tula and Bella, had grouped together in the corner and were downing wine, shooting shifty-eyed and half-terrified glances to wherever Izzy was in the room, as if she were going to bite them.
    If only she could.
    They had reason to be looking like frightened dogs; they all did. What Chick had done—Izzy grimaced at the thought of Chick, dead or undead—had upset the balance, and no one knew what would happen next or, more pointedly, to whom it would happen.
    But they were all there to see her off. The oldest of them and the youngest, the generation of Izzy’s daughter, and of course Izzy herself, the only one of her own generation still standing, now that Chick was dead and Audra was … had fallen ill. That was the way to say it: ill, ailing. And in deep, deep trouble.
    She peered into the sitting room from the kitchen, where she was temporarily hiding, wishing everyone would just go away. She longed to escape to her basement room, where she could figure out the length and breadth of this particular situation and further damn Chick to hell. Audra too.
    They were all talking talking talking in the other room, mostly in hushed funereal tones, but she could hear them well enough, and her head pounded. Ugh . She would like to strike them all mute. The thought made her smile.
    Izzy had done hostess rounds already, once with a nice bottle of wine and then again with coffee. She was in the kitchen now under the guise of putting trays of dainties together. She was visible but mostly inaccessible. Her favourite state.
    In front of her on the kitchen counter, beside the tray of stuffed mushrooms someone had brought
    (full of cheese and sodium, ugh )
    was her address book, open to Chick’s page. She tapped the edge of the counter with a pen until she caught the eye of her cat, Tansy.
    “Up,” she demanded. “Up.” The cat blinked twice, not wanting to appear eager, and then jumped, landing softly.
    “Good girl. Pretty girl.” Izzy rubbed the cat’s head. From the pocket of her very good suit she produced a tiny treat. She gave it to the cat, who ate it, lovingly, from her fingers. “That’s my girl,” she whispered, and the cat arched under Izzy’s hand.
    She picked up the pen and scratched a line through Margaret Henderson . She had not liked “Chick” and had never called her old friend that. At one time she’d tried to get Margaret to give up her nickname. She wouldn’t.
    Yet another good reason for her to be dead.
    The line through the name became two, and then absently Izzy scribbled hasty loops over her own handwriting, completely obliterating her old friend’s name.
    Under Margaret’s name and address was more useless information:
    Husband Bill .
    She drew strokes through that too. Bill was dead too. Just last week. They say that couples who are close in life also die very closely. Chick—stupid stupid stupid—had done her horrible, selfish deed the day of Bill’s funeral. Everyone out there was all poor thing couldn’t live without her Bill . Gawd, wasn’t everyone’s husband dead, for chrissakes? Izzy’s Roger, Audra’s Walter. Aggie’s husband had