Renée buttoned her coat. She thought about it honestly, because she owed herself that much.
"Because nobody told me," she said. "When it was my dad. And I was a nurse, and I still didn't know what I was looking at. And I've never forgiven anybody for that."
She went to the door. At the threshold she turned back. Lauren was still at the table, both hands flat on either side of the silver cardigan, as though holding it down.
"Don't contact my husband again," Renée said. "Not to say you're sorry. Not to tell him about your father. Not at the funeral. If you need people, find other people. He's not available to you. Whatever happens with him and me, he's not available to you."
"I understand."
"And don't ever call my daughter a movie star again. If you see her someday, at the store, in town, anywhere. Just let her be a kid."
Lauren nodded, and nodded, and could not speak.
Renée walked out onto the porch, past the half-strung lights coiled at the top of the steps. She stood there for a moment in the cold. Then, without quite knowing why, she bent down and picked up the loose end of the strand and found the little plastic clips along the railing and hooked the lights onto them, one after another, until the strand reached the post at the bottom of the steps. She plugged the end into the extension cord that someone had left lying there. The whole railing lit up, white and soft, all the way down.
She did not look back at the window to see whether Lauren was watching. She got into her car and drove home.
* * *
The Christmas Eve pageant at Grace Community Church was held in the fellowship hall, under fluorescent lights, with a plywood stable that the men's group rebuilt every year from the same warped pieces. Ivy was the third shepherd from the left. She wore Matt's cut-down brown bathrobe belted with rope and a dish towel on her head held in place with a headband, and she carried a stuffed lamb under one arm, and when it came time for the shepherds to be sore afraid she threw herself backward onto the carpet with such commitment that the second shepherd, a solemn boy named Elijah, had to help her up.