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all grew up overnight.”
    â€œHey, Mrs. Vanni,” I said, surprising myself by how very happy I was to see her.
    â€œIs this your little one?” she said, her eyes looking almost hopefully at Rose.
    â€œYup,” I answered. “This is Rose.”
    Mrs. Vanni rested a hand on Gabby’s back. Her nails looked as though they had been freshly manicured in a slick shade of red. She was the sort of woman who believed that you should keep yourself up, even after you’d put on a few pounds. “This is Bobby’s little girl,” she said proudly. She bent downtoward her granddaughter. “Honey, this is
Rose
. Can you tell her your name?”
    Gabby did as instructed and I waited to see if she would point at Rose’s birthmark, scrunch her face, and lean away, as other little girls sometimes did. But Gabby just leaned in as Rose showed her the sparkly, probably magical rock that she had found in my mother’s driveway. Once Linda Vanni was satisfied that the girls were properly acquainted, she turned back to me.
    â€œSo,” she said, through an exhalation. “Everything good with you, Jenna?” Her brows were lifted expectantly, prompting me with a nod. Mrs. Vanni knew not to ask after Rose’s father, Duncan—her tact a benefit, I supposed, of the King’s Knoll rumor mill.
    â€œNo complaints.”
    â€œAnd how’s Wonderlux doing?”
    Wonderlux was the small design firm I owned with my business partner, Maggie. I smiled at Mrs. Vanni’s ability to remember its name. The woman should be on a campaign trail, whispering facts about the constituents into her candidate’s ear. “It’s good,” I said. “Thanks for asking.” I gestured to the gathering around us. “It’s great that you guys still manage to pull this off.”
    â€œYeah. We’ve still got a pretty good group.” Her head tilted from side to side. “Though I will tell you it was easier when Sal was more mobile.”
    â€œI heard about Mr. Vanni’s . . .” I searched for the name of the ailment, rolling my hand in front of me as if beckoning it forth, and feeling ashamed that it wasn’t on the tip of my tongue.
    â€œRheumatoid arthritis,” she offered, not unkindly; thenshe looked around at the assembled crowd. Her eyes lingered on a group of boisterous teenage boys who had positioned themselves in front of a Crock-Pot and were decimating its contents. Then she looked at me meaningfully. With a concessionary tilt of her head, she said, “Course it’s not like it used to be.” When my confusion registered, her face became troubled, as if she had said too much. “We’ve been having problems lately.” She looked back out to the crowd with a sad and subtle nod. “In the neighborhood.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I asked.
    She inhaled through her teeth, almost wincing. “There’ve been some thefts,” she said, enunciating every consonant. “Lots of things going missing.”
    â€œReally?” I asked. “In King’s Knoll?” Even though the neighborhood had become dated and somewhat down-market, I had thought it was regarded as safe and family-friendly.
    Mrs. Vanni nodded, her chin moving slowly up, then down.
    â€œMy God,” I said. “That’s such a shame.”
    â€œWell, no one really knew they were thefts at first. Gina Loost thought she lost her watch and Perry Burt thought he misplaced his iPhone. Then enough people start missing things, and . . .” She opened her hand, as if to offer up the logical conclusion. “Just the other day, someone got into Beth Castro’s garage and stole her son’s mountain bike.” It seemed to pain her even to think about it—theft being a problem in King’s Knoll. “That’s Zack right over there,” she said, nodding toward the boys by the Crock-Pot. They were