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Maggie put her hand on her arm before she slipped out the door. “Call me if you need me, okay?”
    Claire gave her an uncertain look. “Okay.”
    “Anytime,” Maggie insisted.
    Claire nodded and hurried down the walk, as if trying to put some distance between them. Maggie couldn’t help but wonder why. She watched curiously as Claire climbed into her car and drove away.
    Maggie had known Claire since she came to St. Stanley five years ago. They had met at the library’s annual book sale, one of Maggie’s favorite events of the year, where they had both been eyeing a vintage Betty Crocker cookbook.
    Maggie had let Claire take it, since she already had one, but they had struck up a conversation and found they had a mutual love of books and bargains. Maggie had invited Claire to join their group, but she had demurred.
    Over the next few months, Maggie noticed that Claire was a bit of a loner who liked to keep to herself. Given that she was only in her mid-thirties, this seemed like a waste to Maggie, so she and Ginger decided they needed to have an intervention.
    They began having their Good Buy Girl meetings in a study room at the library. Claire took to dropping by the meetings with her own coupon book and, before she realized it, they had recruited her for membership into the GBGs. Once she’d caught on, Claire laughed loud and long. It was the first time Maggie had heard her laugh, and she thought it a shame that she didn’t do it more often.
    As they got to know her, they discovered that Claire had a dry sense of humor, she never dated and her biggest extravagance was gourmet pet food for her cat, Mr. Tumnus.
    Maggie went back to her kitchen and glanced at her calendar. She was watching Josh tomorrow for Sandy, and it just happened to be a story-time morning at the library. Perfect. That would give her a chance to check on Claire without her becoming too suspicious. Not that she was a busybody, Maggie told herself as she folded up the card table and stored it in the closet off the porch. It was just that she cared about her friends, and she had learned in her forty-one years of living that it was better to ask questions and annoy someone than to not ask and watch them suffer.

Chapter 4

    Maggie strapped Josh into his covered bicycle trailer, which was attached to her mountain bike. Both she and Sandy used it to cart him around, as it was cheaper and healthier than driving.
    “Go, Auntie Maggie!” Josh ordered and held up the green Percy train clutched in his chubby fist like it was a drum major’s baton.
    Maggie clicked the chinstrap on her helmet and pushed off toward the center of town. Her small house on Society Road was nestled in the historic district of St. Stanley, just a half mile from the town center.
    She stayed in the bike lane, waving when a friend or neighbor honked as they passed her. She turned onto Main Street and headed for the town green. The library and town hall sat on one end of the green. A narrow road between the two historic red brick buildings led to the large parking lotthat they shared. Because Maggie was on her bike, she pedaled up the walk and stopped at the bike rack in front of the library.
    She unzipped the cover over Josh and unbuckled him. She stored her helmet in the back and grabbed her bag of books to return. Josh, knowing it was story day, shot ahead of her, and Maggie was forced to jog to keep up with him.
    “Josh,” she said as she caught his hand in hers. “What are our two library rules?”
    “No yelling and no running,” he said in his little-boy lisp.
    “Good. Let’s go see who is telling stories today.”
    They made their way into the children’s room. The entrance was designed to look like a castle, with a real wooden drawbridge over blue carpet and big gray stacked blocks painted to look like castle walls. At each end of the castle walls were small, round rooms, decorated to look like turrets that the kids could climb into to read.
    As always, Josh was very