Chapter 12: Lantern Night

Forty people were looking at a photo of me with my hands on Stian's chest.

I put the phone face down on the table.

"Say something," Stian said.

"She took that from across the street."

"I know."

"She must have followed us around the market."

"Kendra doesn't follow," Ellie said from the doorway in her nightgown, with her glasses crooked. "She has people who follow for her."

"Do I answer?"

"No."

"Do I delete it?"

"Not that either." Ellie rubbed her eyes. "Screenshot it. Then go to bed. It's the best thing she could have done."

"How is it the best?"

"Because she wanted forty people to pity you or hate you."

"Instead she showed them you're not alone."

I laughed, and it hurt a little.

I did not sleep until three.

When I did, I dreamed of a long table with a red tablecloth and nobody sitting at it.

The next day was the twenty-third.

Bayfield held its lantern walk every year on the night before Christmas Eve.

Ellie had been talking about it for a week.

At dusk we went down to the harbor.

The whole town had gathered on the shore with paper lanterns in their hands.

Hundreds of small lights glowed against the dark ice.

An old man with a trumpet played a carol too slowly, and nobody minded.

Stian's mother stood at the foot of the dock in a red scarf.

She was small and gray-haired, and she was handing out candles from a basket.

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