Chapter 1
Friday, October 22
Tj Jensen carefully parallel parked her Four Runner on Lake Front Road in front of Tiz the Season, the retail store where she’d brought her half-sisters, Ashley and Gracie to buy their Halloween costumes. The entire downtown section of the lakefront community of Serenity Nevada was decorated for the upcoming Halloween festivities. Bright yellow aspen trees lining the sidewalks were draped with orange and white twinkle lights, while hundreds of scarecrows and huge orange pumpkins were displayed in front of brightly lit shops inviting the casual passerby in from the crisp fall air.
“Oh, look,” Gracie gasped as she climbed out of the vehicle and noticed the huge fall village, complete with an operating train in the front window. Ashley and Gracie trotted over to watch as the small train chugged, tooted, and smoked its way through the miniature town square. The store’s owner added to the village each season. This year a delightful traveling carnival with a revolving Ferris wheel and a brightly painted merry-go-round were prominently displayed alongside the charming Main Street.
“Okay, we’re in, we’re out,” Tj warned as she locked the car door and slung her purse over her shoulder. “You need to be at dance in half an hour.”
“There is no dance,” Gracie informed her.
Tj turned to look directly at the brown-haired, brown-eyed kindergartener while Ashley walked around the edge of the building to get a closer look at the miniature village. “It’s Friday. You always have dance on Friday.”
“Miss Marsha sent a note. I gave it to you on Monday.” Gracie’s ringlets bounced as she shuffled impatiently.
Tj did remember something about a note.
“She had to go to the dynocologist to get a baby,” Gracie informed her.
Marsha and her husband of four years had been trying to conceive for a while, but Tj was surprised she’d told her students as much. “She told you she was going to the gynecologist?”
“No. She said she had a pointment, but Bethany said she was getting a baby from a dynocologist ’cause she needed to get fertilizer for her eggs.” Bethany Sherwood was a precocious five-year-old who, in Tj’s opinion, was a bit too informed for her age. “Dance is going to be on lasterday.”
“Lasterday isn’t a word,” corrected red-haired, green-eyed Ashley as she returned from the window. “Dance class has been rescheduled to tomorrow. Can we go in now?” she asked impatiently. “The place is packed. All the good stuff will be gone.”
“There’s plenty of good stuff.” Tj grabbed each of her sisters’ hands and opened the front door to deafening noise as excited children ran up and down crowded aisles in search of the perfect costume. Picking up a bright orange hand basket, she pushed her way into the throng.
“Mom said that last year when I wanted to be Hannah Montana, and I had to be Strawberry Shortcake. Do you know how many seven-year-olds went trick-or-treating as Strawberry Shortcake? One,” Ashley continued without waiting for Tj to answer. “My social life was totally ruined.”
“What social life?” Tj teased. “You were seven.”
Ashley sighed loudly and rolled her eyes, but Tj noticed a teary glaze to which her independent sister would never admit. While Gracie would curl up in her lap and cry herself to sleep if she was feeling sad, Ashley hid her feelings behind a mask of mature indifference that Tj had rarely been able to crack. Tj paused and reconsidered her hurried approach to the errand. Despite her best intentions, she’d made so many mistakes with Ashley in the three months since her mother died and the courts had appointed her legal guardian of two half-sisters she barely knew.
“You’re right,” Tj apologized, blue eyes locking with pale green ones. “I’m sorry I didn’t have the chance to bring you earlier in the month. I’m sure there will be plenty of good stuff, but if there’s not, we’ll try another store.”
“Okay,” Ashley conceded, turning to wipe away a tear before anyone noticed.
“How about witches?” Tj suggested as she tried to lighten the mood by holding a mask with a huge wart on the nose in front of her face.
Ashley placed a crown from a nearby table on her head. “I want to be a princess.” “I want to be Belle,” Gracie insisted.
“Belle’s too provincial,” replied Ashley. “I want to be Jasmine.”
Provincial? Tj watched as her intellectually advanced but socially awkward sister skipped down the aisle toward a table overflowing with dresses and accessories of all colors and sizes. Hurrying to catch up, she pulled a blue dress from the pile. “This looks like your size.”
“That’s Sleeping Beauty,” Ashley complained. “I really want to be Jasmine.”
“Okay.” Tj set her purse on the floor and dug through the disorganized pile of costumes throngs of shoppers had tried on and discarded. At one point, Tj figured, the delicate outfits, which the sign on the wall promised came with dress, crown, and plastic shoes, had been neatly packaged and organized by princess and size. Today, however, the clothes were piled onto a table in total disarray. “How about this?” She held up a dress and a pair of shoes in front of Gracie.
“Shoes are right, but that’s Cinderella’s dress,” Gracie whined. “I want to be Belle.”
Wasn’t one princess the same as any other? Fancy dress, high-heeled slippers, and sparkly crown? Tj set down the pair of shoes on the floor next to her purse, texted an SOS to her best friend, Jenna Elston, and waited for a reply. Tj attributed her lack of knowledge of anything princess to the fact that her mother had deserted her when she was only three years old, subjecting her to an upbringing in an all-male household. Tj conveniently blamed her mom’s desertion on most, if not all, of her feminine deficiencies. But if she was honest with herself, they were probably more genetic than environmental. Most days Tj wore her tomboyishness as a badge of honor. She could outhike, outski, and outrun most of the men in town of a comparable age. But today, waist deep in princess dresses, she really could use Jenna’s help.
Tj’s phone beeped when Jenna texted back: yellow dress, dark hair, B & B. “B and B?” Tj said out loud.
“Beauty and the Beast,” Gracie informed her as she tossed a bag of Snickers into their basket.
Tj didn’t know how she would have managed when her mother and her third husband died in a car accident three months earlier, leaving Tj as guardian for two half-sisters she barely knew if it weren’t for Jenna and her unwavering support. It helped that Jenna had two young daughters about the same age as her sisters. Unfortunately, Tj’d had to call on Jenna during the past few months more often than she cared to confess.
“Excuse me.” Tj turned and grabbed the upper arm of the high school-aged clerk. “I’m looking for a Belle costume.”
“There’s more Disney stuff at the end of aisle twelve.”
“Thanks.” Tj grabbed Gracie’s hand and turned to change direction.
“Do you have Jasmine costumes?” Ashley asked before the clerk could walk away. “I think we’re out of Jasmine, but we have a few Snow Whites left.”
“Snow White is for babies. I want to be Jasmine,” Ashley insisted.
“Sorry. You should have come in earlier. Just a week until Halloween, you know.” Ashley put her hands on her hips and shot Tj a glance that said I told you so.
“Besides,” he added, “you really should be Ariel. Ariel has beautiful red hair like you. I think I might have a costume that will fit you in the back.”
“Really?” Ashley beamed.
“Yeah, I’ll check. Just wait right here.”
“He said I was beautiful,” Ashley gushed as the clerk went in search of the costume. “He said I looked just like Ariel.”
“You do honey, you do.”
“What about Belle?” Gracie started to dance around in that special I gotta go way.
“As soon as the clerk gets back with Ashley’s costume.”
Tj watched as a woman with a crying infant strapped to her chest, a toddler in her arms, and a preschooler on each side, schlepped an armload of princess separates up to the mile-long line at the checkout stand. Tj loved Halloween, but sometimes she wondered what had happened to homemade costumes like the ones she’d worn as a child. Toss a sheet over your head, cut out a couple of eyeholes, and you were good to go. No wading through piles of dresses or spending a month’s mad money on an outfit the girls would wear only once.
“Here we go.” The clerk had returned from the storage room. “An Ariel costume for my redheaded princess and a Belle costume for my dark-haired princess.” Both girls screamed in delight as the clerk handed them complete unopened sets of the princesses of their choice. Dress, shoes, crown, all matching, in exactly the right size.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Thanks, but I’ll just take the princess costumes for now.” Tj grabbed Gracie’s hand and headed toward the long line that awaited her at the checkout stand.
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