He looked up and found his dad holding open the front door.
“No,” Mark answered.
“Took you long enough. I wondered if Lette Mae put you to work in the kitchen.” Cal Rivers smiled, deep grooves along the sides of his mouth proving he did it a lot. Irritatingly.
Mark pushed the bag at his dad, who took it in the chest, still grinning. “I got ’em and came right back.”
He entered the house, and his dad shut the door behind him. The smell of his childhood home filled him like it always did, reminding him of the contentment of a nine-year-old boy running outside to play in the dirt after eating a stack of syrup-drenched pancakes and gulping down a cold glass of milk he’d squeezed from Ol’ Maize all by himself.
Dad pulled a fritter from the greasy white bag. “See anybody you know?” He took a large bite on his way to the kitchen table, where two glasses of milk waited next to two plates. Maize had long passed, and so had Mark’s milking days.
“It’s a small town, Dad. Everybody knows everybody.”
His dad waited patiently, brow lifted.
“I saw Lette Mae,” Mark answered. “And James Dean.”
Dad gave him a look and plunked down onto a chair. “Anyone else?” He pulled out the chair next to his and motioned for Mark to sit.
Every Friday morning, Mark was sent to the bakery for apple fritters and anything else his dad might request. An attempt to get him out of the house, Mark knew, and maybe see a few people. “Nope.”
His dad gave him a long look, then nudged the other chair with his foot.
Mark sighed and sat at the table, pulling out a fritter and shoving a third of it in his mouth. “There.” He chewed the word. “Happy?”
Dad nodded, still watching him. “You got something there, on your shoulder.”
Mark glanced at his shirt. “I don’t see anything.”
“Hard to miss. Mighty big chip. Right there.”
Mark frowned, but his dad leaned back with a look that challenged Mark to respond. Mark just bit into his fritter.
“We’re putting up framework today. Ivy’s school play is at six.”
Mark swallowed his last bite and took a long drink of milk. It had taken a lot of practice to master the task without dribbling down his front. He wiped his mouth with a napkin.
“You’re going with me,” Dad said.
Mark fought the urge to tell his dad to stop ordering him around. But he knew his dad was the reason he’d come so far in his rehabilitation. If his dad didn’t prod him into stuff he was expected to do, Mark wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t have done anything. Besides, Ivy had begged him to come, and he couldn’t let his niece down.
He nodded and pushed his chair away from the table. “I’ll meet you down at the site.”
“Thanks for the fritter,” Dad said. “Delivery makes ’em taste better.”
Mark grunted in reply.
Riley Madigan looked over the backdrops and the painted props she and a handful of students from art club had worked on for weeks after school. She reviewed the spreadsheet on her clipboard, mentally checking off the order the props would be used in each scene and when each backdrop would be lifted to reveal the next, hoping the mechanics would all work smoothly. Rehearsals had been hit-and-miss.
She found Yvette Newsome, head of the drama department and director of Peter Pan, helping the four mains check their flight gear—basic theater harnesses for “flying”—as the set of the nursery window was pulled away and the background filled with stars before the curtain dropped. Fairly effective and low-risk as long as everything coordinated properly. At least stunt rehearsals had gone well. Dropping backgrounds was one thing. Dropping kids? Never good.
Yvette spied Riley and dismissed the students. “Hey, just the person I need to talk to.”
“Why do I get nervous when you say that?”
Yvette laughed. They’d been working together on the play practically since the day Riley had moved into the tiny orchard community of Miracle Creek. As soon as Riley had been hired as the new art teacher and word got out she was revitalizing the defunct art club, Yvette had spread out her far-reaching wing and pulled her into the frantic carnival ride that was a high school play.
Yvette dragged a foam-and-fiberglass prop toward center stage. She shaded her eyes against the glare of the stage lights and called out, “Can I get the lighting for the Lost Boys scene?” She waved to Riley. “Follow me.”
Riley followed her into the auditorium seating.
“Now, what do you see?”
Riley narrowed her gaze. “What is it supposed to be?”
“It’s supposed to be a rock,” Yvette said.
“Well, with this lighting, it looks like a pig.”
“Like the rear end of a pig.”
“I can’t un-see it,” Riley said. The shadows the students had painted had to have been unintentional, but still. “Is that a tail?”
“I can’t have a pig’s rear end on my stage, Riley. Wendy sits on this rock.”
“What if you turn it around?”
Yvette yelled to one of the kids on stage to turn the prop around.
After a moment, Yvette broke the silence. “Now it looks like a roast turkey.” She threw out her arm. “It’s too distracting.”
“I’ll fix it,” Riley said. “If I do it now the paint will be dry in time.”
“Thanks,” Yvette said. “You are the Smee to my Hook. Don’t take that the wrong way.”
She laughed. “Smee is charming in his own way. I’ll take it.”
“Hey, who brought the turkey?” a student called from a row of seats. Giggles followed, and the lights on the prop went out.
Riley hurried to the stage. She’d need to move the prop to the art room; no easy task given its awkward shape and size. After enlisting a couple of students to help her, she led the way off stage and down the hall, exchanging the bright hum of the auditorium for the quiet art room.
They set the prop down on a covered table used for painting. “Thanks, guys,” she said.
