When the charades had stopped, Betty had switched through the other forbidden channels. There had been a lot of cooking shows on tonight and she didn’t feel like watching those, but she’d found something very interesting on channel five.

That pretty young actress was back, searching for something. She seemed to be typecast in the role of searcher. When she left the room where the papers were kept, Betty had assumed the movie was over. She had been about to switch the channel when she’d seen the actress open the doors to the garden, the same one she’d seen in the funeral movie. Would the undertaker appear? Betty hoped so.

There he was! Betty had clapped her hands together in delight. He was her very favorite actor, unless you counted Jack, who was in the hospital. They didn’t run many hospital movies now.

Betty reached for a blank disk and put it into the machine, pushing the button to record. She’d start a collection to show Jack when he came back home. While the undertaker series wasn’t as funny as the movies that Jack had recorded for her, it was still very exciting. She gasped as the sharp metal thing crashed down. You’d never guess they made those things out of Styrofoam so they couldn’t hurt anybody. Then the actress had crumpled to the ground very gracefully, and since she was pretending to be dead, she hadn’t moved at all.

Would the undertaker bury her in another funeral? Betty had leaned forward to peer at the screen intently. No, he just put the Styrofoam shovel back in the gazebo, wrapped the pretty actress in a big plastic tarp, and carried her down the hall to the stairwell. Once they’d gone through the door, Betty had known that the forbidden channel five movie-of-the-night was over, but she might be able to catch the rest of the film on another channel.

She had been looking for the ending of the movie when she’d heard Nurse coming with the warm milk and cookies she always had before bedtime. She’d barely had time to switch to a talk show before Nurse had come into her room with the tray. It had been a close call. Very close. She had to remember to be more careful in the future now that Jack wasn’t here to remind her.

The man who loved Budweiser beer was rolling his eyes at something Johnny had said and the audience was laughing again. Betty frowned. She liked the forbidden channels much better. Should she take a chance and scan them to see if she could find the end of the movie?

There was water running in the bathroom. That meant Nurse was fixing her face. Nurse took a long time every night in the bathroom. She’d explained it all to Betty. When people got older, their skin dried out. That meant they had to use moisturizers. Nurse put a pink cream on her face every night that had to stay there for five minutes. Then she washed it off and put on a moisturizer. Betty hadn’t said what she’d been thinking out loud, that nothing could help Nurse from looking like one of those big black birds.

Betty took a chance and reached for the remote control. She had to find out where the undertaker would bury the actress. It was a very important part of the movie.

There he was again on forbidden channel one, carrying the searcher into a room of ice. There was a word for a place like that, but Betty couldn’t think of it. She winced as he rolled her out of the tarp, then chuckled at her own foolishness. Of course they’d stopped the cameras to put in a mannequin just like the doll-lady made, so the actress could go back to her dressing room to rehearse her next scene. It looked so real, it had almost fooled her. Movie magic was wonderful!

When the water stopped running, Betty put on the talk show again. She was laughing at the towel around the host’s head, it took a certain amount of courage to appear on television in a silly-looking thing like that, when Nurse came in with the bedtime needle.

They all sat on pillows covered with Royal Stewart plaid, the tartan Moira claimed she was entitled to use since her grandfather’s name had been Stewart. The pizzas were arranged on the living room table, a huge, round knee-high slab of black marble and the only furniture in the room. The walls were still white, the windows bare, but Moira had lit a cheerful blaze in the black marble fireplace and the cavernous room was a perfect place for games. When Paul had inquired, Moira had called the effect her Terminally Lazy Look and sworn she’d finish with her decorating just as soon as the roads were clear.

Laureen and Alan sat at one end of the table, passing slivers of pizza back and forth. There were the standard varieties: Jayne’s sausage and cheese, Ellen’s Canadian bacon and pineapple, Moira’s was Italian meatballs and fresh tomato, and Walker’s was pepperoni and onion. There were also some very unusual creations like Paul’s sardine and cream cheese, Hal and Grace’s feta cheese and Greek olive, which they’d made together in Grace and Moira’s kitchen because Hal hadn’t wanted to wake Vanessa, and a strange concoction which Marc refused to name. When they’d tasted them all, Laureen looked at Alan with a question in her eyes. He took another bite and nodded.

“And the winner is . . .” Laureen paused for dramatic effect. “Marc’s braunschweiger and Swiss cheese with pesto sauce. It’s the most unusual thing we’ve ever tasted.”

“Pesto sauce?” Marc looked surprised. “I thought it was green onions, all ground up.”

Laureen laughed. “Why did you use it if you didn’t know what it was?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t have any tomato sauce and I had to use something. It looked kind of interesting when I opened the jar, so I just spread it on the top.”

“Then it was a lucky accident.” Laureen nodded. “Tomato sauce would have been horrible. And Paul gets an honorable mention. I don’t know anyone who ever tried to put sardines on a pizza before. Moira? Bring out the prize.”

Moira got up to present Marc with a long, narrow package wrapped in newspaper.

“Uh, oh.” Marc accepted it gingerly. “Is this one of your father’s things, Grace?”

“Open it and see,” Grace ordered with a grin.

Ellen studied Marc carefully as he started to unwrap the package. Why on earth would he buy pesto sauce if he didn’t know what it was? Of course, she’d bought tofu ice cream once, and she hadn’t been sure what that was. She guessed it wasn’t so strange, after all.

Everyone leaned forward as the wrapping fell away from a large stuffed rattlesnake.

“Just what I needed!” Marc lifted it up, taking his unusual prize in stride. “I’ll put it on my desk when the roofer comes in with his bid. That way he’ll feel outnumbered.”

“Let’s eat.” Moira passed out plates and napkins. “Will you open more wine, Gracie?”

“I’d be glad to, but we’re out and I was going to pick up some on the way home, but then there was the avalanche and I forgot all about it and we couldn’t have brought it up on the snowmobile anyway because there was barely room for the two of us in all those bulky . . .”

“Never mind, Gracie,” Hal interrupted her. “I’ve got a jug, if no one minds drinking jug wine. Vanessa bought it and she doesn’t know much about wines.”

Grace nodded. Vanessa didn’t know much about anything, but it would be uncharitable to point it out. “If you don’t mind getting it, that would be nice. And if Vanessa’s still awake, why don’t you ask her to join us? There’s plenty of pizza.”

After Hal had left, Laureen turned to Grace. “Why did you have to be so polite? Nobody wants Vanessa down here.”

“That’s precisely why. She’s got feelings after all, plus we have to live in the same building with her so we might as well make the effort because we all like Hal and . . .”

“Okay, Gracie.” Moira patted her arm. “We understand.”

Hal was back in a couple of moments, carrying the jug of wine. “Is Vanessa here?”