Chapter 6: Lobby Potluck

The building held its holiday potluck in the lobby on the second Saturday of December.

Folding tables ran along the mailboxes, and somebody had hung paper snowflakes from the stair rail.

I brought my grandmother's lemon bars on the green dish with the chipped rim, because I had taken it back from Mom's casserole the morning she left.

I set the dish down between a pot of meatballs and a tray of pigs in blankets.

The woman from 2C with the corgi took one at once.

"Oh, these are heaven," she said. "Who made them?"

"My grandmother's recipe."

"Then she was a genius."

That was the nicest thing anyone had said to me in two weeks, and it came from a stranger holding a corgi.

I heard the four of them before I saw them.

Lacey's laugh came down the stairwell first, high and bright, and then Zelda's phone was up and filming the lobby from the landing.

They came in as a group.

Lacey was carrying a basket of her own cookies, perfect ones, with royal icing and sprinkles.

Tobias carried the folding chairs.

Chad trailed behind them with his hands in his pockets, and he looked at me once and looked away.

"Hannah!" Lacey said, and she came straight over with her arms out. "You came! I was so worried you wouldn't."

She hugged me.

I let her, because forty of my neighbors were watching.

Her braid smelled of vanilla.

"I made extra," she whispered in my ear. "For everyone. For you too."

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