I stared her down, waiting for her to passive aggressively attack me or look down her nose at me again.

But then something changed in her eyes. It was like water on a fire. The anger died.

And was replaced by tears.

The shaking in her chin spread to the rest of her body and she bent over, leaning her head against the handle of her shopping cart. Loud, violent sobs exploded from her mouth, the sort of high-pitched wails that made me think of a sad sea lion.

People walked past us, eyeing her, then me before quickly moving away. I stood there, my hands moving from my hips to my cart. I knew better than to try to comfort her; I had no doubt a reassuring hand on her shoulder might lead to a direct punch to my stomach. It was disconcerting to see a grown woman cry halfway between the baking aisle and the cereal aisle at the grocery store. It was even more disconcerting to know that I was partly to blame.

Finally, Eleanor stood up, her eyes red and swollen. Rivers of blue eye shadow and black mascara ran down her cheeks, leaving dark trails on her powdered face. She fished around in her purse and pulled out a tissue, wiping her eyes with a practiced hand. She took a deep breath and her entire body vibrated.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” she said.

“That’s...okay.”

She pursed her lips and took a couple of deep breaths, clearly trying to regain her composure. She started to say something and her mouth hung open for a moment, then closed. She tried again and her mouth did the same thing. Open, then closed. She took another deep breath and hitched her pants up to just under her boobs.

“You’re right,” she finally said. “We are not in great shape. This could be our last production.”

Given that I’d just thrown all that in her face, I wasn’t sure what to say to her admission.

“We’ve bled money for the last year,” she said, staring at the package of frozen lasagna in her cart. “I’ve tried everything I could think of, but nothing has worked. I’ve never had to ask for any kind of assistance before and I guess I’ve waited too long now.” She paused, and I wasn’t sure if it was because she needed to catch her breath or if she was doing it for dramatic effect. “I just thought that if I changed things up this time around, it might also change our fortunes.”

“What did you change up this time around?”

She sniffed several times. “Have you been to any of our previous productions?”

I shook my head. “No.”

She sniffed again and steadied herself against the cart. “My daughter has had the lead role in every production we’ve done for the last three years. Now, mind you, she is a wonderfully talented actress and no matter what anyone thinks, she earned the right to play those roles. But there was a...redundancy...to seeing her onstage so often in the same company.”

I could see how that could be considered redundant. And annoying.

“I think people in the community tired of seeing her. It felt as if they were watching the same production.” She looked at me and tried to force a smile. “So I went with Amanda Pendleton as Snow White.”

I could feel my anger and animosity slipping away. She was doing something I didn’t think possible: Eleanor Bandersand was finding a way to make me sympathize with her. I was starting to feel like Bugs Bunny in that old cartoon where he morphs into a jackass.

“Let me clarify,” Eleanor continued, her voice a little stronger now.  “Amanda earned the role. She’s a very good, very capable young actress. So it’s not as if I just carelessly handed her the role. I just thought it was fortuitous that she tried out at the same time I was looking to...change the dynamic.” She paused. “I was optimistic then. I thought she might bring a few new people to our shows, spark some new enthusiasm in the community.”

I thought she might be overestimating the entire Moose River community’s interest in local theater, but I didn’t think she was wrong in what she’d hoped for.

“So I thought we might endure,” she said, taking another deep breath and then exhaling. “But then Amanda went and ran off or went wherever she went and I’m sure now people are looking at us as some kind of circus.”

Again, I thought she was attaching too much importance and significance to her tiny community theater company. Moose River was a town that supported local endeavors but it wasn’t as if theater dominated the extracurricular scene.

I cleared my throat. “Joanne says ticket sales have been good,” I offered.

She gave me a patronizing smile. “Ticket sales need to be exceptional for us to crawl out of the hole we are in, Ms. Savage.”

I frowned. “I think she thought most of the shows were close to sold out.”

How much more exceptional could ticket sales get?

“Perhaps,” she said. “But does that mean that they’ll still show up? Will they purchase concessions? Will they buy the little Star Grams for the actors? Season ticket passes for the remaining shows?” She raised her eyebrows. “All of those things add up and I’m afraid that given the circumstances surrounding Amanda’s leaving the show and the ensuing chaos, people will choose to remain at home rather than come to see our shows.”

If she was counting on the ancillary income from the shows, then the financial issues were bigger than even Joanne had alluded to. She probably should’ve quit while she was ahead and canceled the Snow White production before it even began. Because it sounded like now the best she could hope for was to make enough money to pay the bills that were already sitting and waiting.

Eleanor took another deep breath and set her hands firmly on the handle of her cart. “I need to be going. Goodbye, Daisy.”

Good thing I wasn’t expecting an apology. Or an un-banning.

But as I watched her waddle away, the waistband of her pants pulled up to the middle of her back, I was struck by one thing.

She’d wanted the production to be a success. She’d needed it to be a success. The production had been harmed by putting Madison in the lead role mid-way through rehearsals.

There was no possible way Eleanor could’ve been involved in Amanda’s disappearance.

THIRTY THREE

“Why are we going to watch cheerleading?” Will complained from the back seat of the minivan.

“Because our friends are in it and we are going to support them,” I told him.

“Yeah, but I thought you told Grace and Sophie the only way they could be cheerleaders was if you got stabbed and died and your ghost couldn’t find them to haunt them.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror. “I don’t think I said anything about getting stabbed.”

He rolled his eyes and moved his gaze to the window.

It was the evening of the regional cheerleading championships and I’d told Brenda we’d come to watch. I wasn’t particularly enamored with the idea of watching a couple hours of plastered-on smiles and young girls wearing clown-like makeup, but the girls were excited to watch Maddie and I had no doubt that they’d find it all exciting. Will was just a victim of my unwillingness to leave anyone at home that night. He’d tried to argue that Emily and Jake were getting to stay home, but I pointed out that Emily had homework and Jake had a conference call. They were staying home to work. When I’d offered up some chore options for him to complete rather than going with us – cleaning the bathroom and polishing the wooden stair banister – he’d sighed and dragged himself to the car.

“We can cheer if we want to,” Grace said behind me. “You always say we can do what we want.”

“Well, yeah,” I warily agreed.

“You just said that we had to think about whether we wanted to cheer for other people or whether we wanted people cheering for us,” Sophie said.

“That’s right,” I said, glad someone had paid attention to whatever rant I’d gone off on whenever I’d gone off on it. “Just depends on what you want.”