“Relax,” I said. “And here comes your ex-wife. Be nice.”

“She can ride on the roof, too,” he muttered.

Stella smiled as she came up to us, her phone in her hand. “That was a great play. Both of the girls were terrific. I can’t believe Grace stepped in to play Snow White.””

“They did a good job,” I said. “Both girls.”

On cue, they both burst out of the theater door and beelined for us.

“I told you I could do it!” Grace said, pointing at me, her face a little creepy in all the stage make-up.

“Yes, you did,” I said, pulling her into me with a hug. “You were fantastic.”

“Everyone is saying she should always have the lead,” Sophie said, leaning into her dad. “That she could end up in Hollywood or something!”

“Or something,” I said, squeezing Grace one more time. “Stella and I were just saying how great you both were.”

They both grinned.

“They have snacks for us backstage,” Grace said. “Can we go get some?”

“Of course.”

Grace grabbed Sophie’s hand and they scurried around Stella and disappeared back into the theater.

Both of them had been good. Sophie was excellent in her role as Sneezy, and Grace had impressed us all as Snow White. It didn’t matter that she was shorter than all of the dwarfs and that the wig she’d worn hid half her face or that her singing voice was almost painful to listen to. She knew all of her lines and all of her stage direction, too. It was evident that she really had been paying attention during the rehearsals. There had been a couple of hiccups – a tree had toppled over during one of the songs, and a rabbit had lost its cottontail when it hopped off stage – but overall, it seemed to have gone off without a hitch. They had three more performances, but if the first performance was any indication, it looked like they’d do just fine with the rest of the shows. Especially if they could dub over Grace’s singing.

“I’m glad you were here tonight, Daisy,” she said. She smiled. “For the whole thing. Sounds like you had quite a night last night.”

I wondered what she’d heard… and from whom. It wasn’t like she and Jake had chatty conversations. “It was interesting,” I said.

“I know you were probably surprised to see me here again,” she said, changing the subject. “I had a...change of plans.”

“Flight get canceled?” Jake asked.

“No.”

“Big sale at MOA you couldn’t miss?”

Stella enjoyed shopping almost as much as she enjoyed working. It had been a sore point in their marriage, since her retail therapy resulted in bedrooms and a garage overflowing with unused stuff.

“Uh, no,” she said, a frown creasing her flushed face. “I was actually offered the chance to...interview.”

Jake stared at her. “Interview?”

She nodded. “As I told you, I originally came up here because I had some business in Chicago. But last night, I got a call from a headhunter. They were calling on behalf of a company that really wanted to interview me. Normally, I blow those things off, but they’ve been persistent and they’re located down in Minneapolis, so I figured I’d meet with them this morning while I was here, just to see what they had to say.”

I felt Jake’s body go rigid next to me.

“So we met this morning,” she said. “That’s why I’m still here.”

“Was it a good interview?” I asked.

“Actually, yes,” she said. “They offered me the position on the spot. With a better salary and better benefits than what I have now.” She smiled. “So as of next month, it looks like I’ll be a Minnesota resident. Isn’t that just crazy?”

Jake’s mouth dropped open.

“Yeah,” I said, positioning myself closer to Jake, preparing to restrain him from throttling his ex-wife or catching him if he fainted. Because both were plausible scenarios. “Crazy. Um, congratulations.”

“Thank you,” she said. She glanced at the phone in her hand, then held it up. “Excuse me. I need to take this call.” She wove her way through the crowd, disappearing down the hallway.

I looked at Jake.

His eyes had glazed over.

“Relax,” I said. “Just relax.”

“You know what’s funny,” he said. “It sounded like she said she was moving here. Ha ha. Isn’t that funny? I must’ve had a stroke or something. PTSD from the clown encounter.”

I snaked my arm around his. “It’ll be fine, Jake. It’ll be fine. Just relax.”

“I mean, I must’ve blacked out during the part where she said she was kidding, right?” he said. “I totally missed that part. Ha ha.”

I squeezed his arm and shook my head. I didn’t know what Stella moving to Minnesota would mean, but we’d handle it. Like we did everything else. We could handle missing actresses and crazy directors and new boyfriends and ex-spouses.

“I did black out, right?” he asked. “Right? I just missed that part, right?”

As we stood there waiting for the girls to emerge from the theater so we could tell them how great they were again and how much we loved watching them, I didn’t have the heart to crush him.

“Sure,” I said. “That’s what you missed.”

“Oh, wow,” he said. “Good. Great. Because I can’t believe our life could get any crazier than it has been lately.”

I squeezed his arm.

He could deny it all he wanted, but I was ready to embrace it.

Bring on the crazy.

THE END

Want to make sure you don't miss out on future new releases from Jeff Shelby?

Sign up for his monthly newsletter right here .

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I've received so many emails and notes from readers of the Moose River series, telling me how nice it is to read about a blended family where their every day lives are intertwined with the mystery. Many folks have asked how the books came to be. The answer is simple: I am lazy and I'm ripping off my own life.

Now, before you get too excited, let me clarify what isn't based on my own life: I've never found a dead body in my basement, I've never found a dead body at a campground, I've never been involved in computer theft or the semi-abduction of a teenager, and I've never been banned from a youth theater production. (Yet.)

I am, however, married to my high school girlfriend, who I lost track of for twenty years. I am the father of four kids, not all of them biologically mine. We homeschool two of those four kids. And we do live in a hundred-year-old house that, um, usually needs a little work. There are certainly some traits and sensibilities that my wife and I share with Daisy and Jake, but for the most part, we exaggerate those in order to have a little fun and provide a little levity.

Last winter, we had a pipe freeze in the basement of our century-old home in a small town in Minnesota, just north of Minneapolis. We'd owned the home for about seven or eight months and to say it was showing its age is a bit of an understatement. The only way to reach the part of the pipe that was frozen was by getting up into a crawlspace that's about five feet off the ground and only about three feet in width. I climbed up on an old stove that had been left by the previous owner and shimmied my way into the dark, disgustingly dirty crawlspace with a flashlight. When I reached the end of the space, having navigated miles of cobwebs and other things that I didn't stop to identify, I found the frozen pipe.

I also found a small door.

After a little trepidation, I opened the door.

The kids were hoping for gold.

My wife was hoping for a secret tunnel that led to the bank on the other side of the railroad. (The home was originally built by the bank president who was brought to town by the railroad back in the 1880s.)

I was just hoping nothing leapt out at me.

Alas, it led to a large, square space, maybe twelve feet by twelve feet, that we originally thought was a coal storage area but now believe to be a cistern that was used to hold water.