Page 73 of Every Star that Shines

He looked up to see a willowy Black woman in striking silver eyeliner and a brightly patterned wrap dress beneath her wool coat accompanied by an East Asian man in a burgundy sports jacket and skinny jeans climbing the creaky stairs. Caleb smiled and greeted them as he took their tickets, then looked at their seat numbers and pointed at the seating chart on the table before handing the tickets back.

“You’ll be right here. Go up the stairs to the right, down two rows, and then into the centre section. The usher will help you.” Caleb pointed at the double doors leading into the main hall, gesturing to the right as he explained.

“Thanks,” said the woman.

“I haven’t seen you two around here before,” Caleb said. “Are you visiting a cast member?”

“In a sense,” the woman said with an amused smile. “We’re Delanie’s friends.”

Caleb blinked and did a double take. “Marie and Desmond?”

Desmond nodded. “So she does talk about me. I had begun to wonder.”

“Caleb, right?” Marie held out her hand, and Caleb shook it and Desmond’s in turn. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Same,” Caleb said, his stomach tightening. Why would Delanie’s friends have come when Delanie herself hadn’t? “You know she’s not here, right?”

Marie shrugged. “I already had my plane ticket, and I wanted to see the kids in my costumes. Besides, you never know what that girl has up her sleeve.”

Caleb’s heart squeezed and his throat thickened. Did Marie know something he didn’t? He wanted to ask, but the next people were coming up the stairs. He took another look at the seating chart and cleared his throat. “Looks like we’ll be seeing each other again. I think I’m sitting right next to you. Don’t let anyone take my seat.” He managed a playful smile—at least, he hoped it looked playful. His heart was rattling against his rib cage so loud, he thought it was auditioning to join the tiny live orchestra as the percussion section.

Marie and Desmond laughed and thanked him as they moved past him into the hall.

A short Filipino woman came up behind him and slid into the vacant chair next to him.

“Sorry I am late,” Raelene said with a staccato accent. “Grayson could not find his Punchinello hat. I swear, that boy will cause all my gray hairs.”

Caleb smiled, taking the next person’s tickets and glancing at Raelene’s thick, jet-black shoulder-length hair. “Your hair has proven pretty resilient to his devastation so far. Does he have the hat now?”

“Oh, yes.” She reached for the tickets of the next person in line. “And I told him he is not to take it home again. He said it was an accident.” She rolled her eyes. “What is that saying? He would lose his head, too, if it were not attached to his shoulders?”

Caleb laughed and nodded. “That sounds like Grayson.”

A wave of people came through the door—Monica and her parents, followed by Rachel and Oliver and their three oldest children. Rachel had told him she would be leaving the energetic Hannah with a sitter. Dave must be parking the car.

“Finally,” Caleb muttered under his breath. There were other things he should be doing besides running the ticket table. Amber was probably having a conniption somewhere. And he wouldn’t mind slipping downstairs to get a few photos of Emma with her hair and makeup all done up before the show started.

As the group reached the top of the stairs, Caleb stood to give Oliver his seat, preparing to take a shortcut through the hall and go backstage. But Monica laid a hand on his arm and stopped him.

“Caleb, can we talk for a minute?”

He was about to object, but something about her tone and the look in her red-rimmed eyes said this couldn’t wait. He nodded. “As long as it’s fast.”

She gave a strained smile. “It will be.” She glanced at the swiftly filling foyer. “Maybe outside?”

He nodded and followed her back toward the entrance, pressing against the wall to squeeze past people coming up the narrow stairs. His coat was backstage, but he wore a thick large-check flannel shirt, so as long as Monica was right about being fast, he shouldn’t need it.

Outside, the sun had set and a thick fog had billowed from the river and covered the downtown area, crystallizing in the frigid air. The fractals amplified and refracted the orange glow of the streetlights so the entire front lawn of the hall—brown and crunchy where it peeked through the remnants of yesterday’s snowfall—seemed caught in a glass snow globe. They moved a few steps away from the sidewalk and the people streaming through the doors behind the semi-privacy of a tree, standing right next to where the lawn dropped steeply toward the river side of the hall.

“What’s wrong?” Caleb asked. The damp cold was penetrating his shirt faster than he’d expected.

Monica wrung her hands. “Have you given any thought to whether you’ll be moving to Brampton?”

Caleb frowned. “Some,” he said slowly. “Do we need to talk about it right now?”

She shook her head. “I wanted to tell you that you don’t need to worry about it. I’ll be staying in Peace Crossing after all.”

“You will?” He took a step closer and lowered his voice. “What happened?”

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