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Half an hour later, her heart now pounding, Allie crossed into Manhattan. She headed for the West Side Highway and drove past the familiar sights — the Hudson River, with its boats and barges, and Riverside Park, where she and Paul occasionally took Sunday morning walks (even though the park was far from their neighborhood in the West Village) and watched the children in the playgrounds and the dogs in the dog runs.

At 30
^th
Street Allie turned east, drove to 7
^th
Avenue, threaded her way south to 14
^th
Street, and finally found a parking space just half a block from her friends' apartment on 12
^th
Street. Her old neighborhood. Allie unloaded her suitcases, locked the car, and fervently hoped she wouldn't see Paul somewhere, his arm slung casually across another woman's shoulders, their heads bent in discussion.

She lugged the suitcases to the entrance of David and Debbie's apartment building and was cheered to see that Shef was on duty at the front desk.

“Good afternoon!” he greeted her. “I haven't seen you in a long time.”

“Hi, Shef.” Allie smiled. “It's nice to see you. Did Debbie and David tell you I'll be using their apartment this week?”

In answer, Shef pulled a set of keys out of the desk drawer and held them aloft. “Everything's ready for you. Let me know if you have any problems. Do you want a cart for your luggage?” He handed her the keys.

Ten minutes later, Allie walked breathlessly through the door of the apartment that she hadn't seen in a year. She wanted to walk through it slowly, to look at the view from each window, but instead she pulled her cell phone from her purse and checked it for messages. Not a single one. Even so, she called Mrs. Prescott. “Any word?” she asked, knowing what the answer would be.

“Sorry,” Mrs. Prescott replied. “Nothing yet. But that's good news. The mother is resting and the baby is staying where he — or she — belongs.”

Allie closed her cell phone and settled in to wait.

If you were to look at a postcard of Camden Falls, Massachusetts, you might see a small town nestled in the hills, or you might see Main Street, with its rows of shops and businesses, or you might see gracious old homes, some dating all the way back to colonial times. But if those photos were taken in the summer, as were many of the ones that grace the postcards sold in the T-shirt Emporium or Stuff 'n' Nonsense or the bookstores, you would not have a picture of Camden Falls at the beginning of the holiday season.

For
this
is Camden Falls on the Monday before Thanksgiving: A feeling of expectation is in the air, a feeling of festivity, too. Hanging in shopwindows are wreaths of autumn flowers and bunches of dried corn. The trees lining Main Street are bare. Soon, they'll be twined with tiny gold lights, but not until next weekend. The residents of Camden Falls don't start decorating for Christmas until Thanksgiving is over. At the edges of the sidewalks and on the roofs of the stores are traces of the season's first snow. It fell last night, just a flurry, really, but it sent Ruby Northrop and Lacey Morris and plenty of other Camden Falls children into a fit of excitement about future snow days and the possibility of blizzards.

Take a walk along Main Street and look at it up close. Here is the Marquis Diner, ready for its first Thanksgiving in Camden Falls. It's owned by the Nelsons, and they've hung a banner in the window announcing that it will be open for business on Thanksgiving Day, serving traditional turkey dinners in addition to everything they usually serve. Here is Fig Tree, the fanciest restaurant in town, the menu in the display case outside the front door bordered with pumpkins and cornucopias. Here is Needle and Thread, the sewing store owned by Min, and by Olivia Walter's grandmother Gigi. Christmas fabrics and trimmings have been for sale since the summer, but the store window still features back-to-school clothing and two quilted Thanksgiving table runners (made by Gigi). No matter what, Min and Gigi will not break with town tradition and decorate their window for Christmas before Thanksgiving has come and gone. Three doors down from Needle and Thread is Sincerely Yours, the store recently opened by Olivia's parents. In its windows are gift baskets filled with artificial chrysanthemums and chocolate turkeys and candles shaped like corncobs.

Now cross the street and walk to the south end of town, past the movie theatre. Here is something exciting. A new business has opened today. The sign out front reads
MATY'S MAGIC STORE
, and this afternoon it's drawing a crowd.

“Look at that!” says Ruby breathlessly. She has walked to Main Street after school with Lacey and Hilary, and they're gawking at the outside of Maty's.

“A magician's hat,” says Lacey. “How did they do that?”

The front of the store has been transformed into an enormous top hat, out of which sticks a pair of pink-and-white rabbit ears.

Hilary reads a sign posted in the front window. “‘Magic galore,'” she says. “‘Tricks, illusions' … hmm. A ‘Who-Done-It Party.' I wonder what that is.”

“This is so cool,” says Ruby. “I'm going to do my Christmas shopping here.”

“In a magic store?” asks Hilary dubiously.

“Yes,” replies Ruby. “If I ever earn any money. It's really a shame that Aunt Allie didn't win the lottery. Oh, well. Come on. Let's go inside.”

If you want a complete picture of Camden Falls, you'll have to leave Main Street behind now. It may be the heart of town, but you'll want to see what lies beyond. Walk west until you reach a tiny cottage plunked down amid gardens, so many gardens that there's no actual yard. The gardens trail from the sidewalk to the house and don't stop there, since ivy climbs the walls. This is the home of Mary Woolsey, who, thinks Flora Northrop, could be a character in a picture book. She's a little old lady like Miss Rumphius or the one with the shoe and all the children. Except that she doesn't have any children. She has two ancient cats, though, who in cat years are probably older than Mary. Mary, who works part-time at Needle and Thread, has lived alone for a long time and is happy in her solitude, although she's also happy that Flora has become her friend. Mary will be celebrating Thanksgiving by herself, and she doesn't mind that at all.

If you feel like taking a long walk on this fine but chilly day, you could hike out the county road, past the turnoffs for Minnewaska State Park and Davidson's Orchards, until you came to a house all by itself in the country. At this hour of the afternoon, the house is empty. It's the home of Nikki Sherman, whose best friends are Olivia, Flora, and Ruby. Until Flora and Ruby moved to town, Nikki had no close friends at all. And now she has three. Nikki's life has not been easy, but in the last year it has changed so much that she sometimes thinks about her younger self as an entirely different person. Her alcoholic father is gone — Nikki isn't sure where, and she doesn't care as long as he never bothers her family again. Her mother now holds down a job that a year ago she could only have dreamed about. Nikki's older brother, who once drifted along, unsure what he wanted to do with his life, is a freshman in college (to everyone's surprise), and Nikki can't wait until he comes home for the Thanksgiving break. This afternoon, Nikki is on her way back from Camden Falls Central High School. The bus will shortly deposit her at the end of the gravel lane leading to her house, where she'll be greeted with boisterous barking by Paw-Paw, and later with hugs by her mother and her little sister, Mae, who's at her after-school program. Nikki misses having her family around during these hours, but she relishes the peace she finds at home, something that was foreign to her for most of her life.

Several miles from Nikki's house, also on the outskirts of Camden Falls, is Three Oaks, the continuing-care retirement community, and this is where Mrs. Sherman found her dream job. The job, which might not, Nikki knows, be a dream job for some people, consists of managing the dining room at Three Oaks. This is demanding and requires Mrs. Sherman to work long hours and often to be at Three Oaks on weekends and holidays. But the pay is good and Mrs. Sherman is grateful to have been selected to fill the position.

Three Oaks is where the Willets live now, and as Mr. Willet leaves his apartment this afternoon and walks through the complex to the wing where his wife, Mary Lou, resides, he notes with plea sure that his new home has put on its holiday face, just as Main Street has. Mr. Willet walks past the Three Oaks barbershop, the Three Oaks gift shop, the Three Oaks coffee shop, and the Three Oaks craft room (all located in the main building) and sees autumn flower arrangements and gourds and even a few carved pumpkins left over from Halloween. He passes into the hospital wing and smiles at the cardboard Pilgrims and cheery
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
banner that decorate the nurses' station. As he enters Mary Lou's room, he reminds himself that his wife may or may not remember who he is — this will depend on whether she's having a good day or a bad day — and decides that if she doesn't remember him, he can try to cheer himself with thoughts about Thanksgiving, and the guests he's invited to join him and Mary Lou in the dining room on Thursday.

Leave Three Oaks behind now and return to Camden Falls. If you walk along Aiken Avenue, you'll pass the Row Houses (there's Mr. Pennington snapping a leash to Jacques's collar), and after a few blocks you'll reach the road that leads to Aunt Allie's house. On this afternoon, the door of her home is shut tight and no lights shine inside. The house, like Allie, is waiting.

Aunt Allie might not have won the lottery, but Ruby Northrop thought that she could feel her own luck changing. For one thing, there was the new baby. A baby on the way who would be her cousin and who would live right in her town. Ruby had never had a cousin nearby and was slightly jealous of Olivia, who had many cousins living near Camden Falls. Then there was the fact that Ruby had gotten a 98 on a spelling test for which she had forgotten to study. Ruby was not noted for her good grades, so this unexpected 98 — surely an A — went right along with all the good things that had been happening lately.

Given her run of luck, she wasn't very surprised to come home from school on Monday, having paid her visit to Maty's Magic Store, to find two exciting messages for her on the answering machine.

“Ruby!” Flora had called from the kitchen. “Come here!”

Ruby was still shrugging out of her backpack. She hustled into the kitchen, shedding clothing and school supplies as she went, a trail of sneakers, papers, a sweater, her social studies book, and finally the backpack itself, now empty.

“What? What?” she cried.

“You got two replies to your ad!” said Flora. “Listen!” She pressed the
REPLAY
button on the machine.

“Hi, Ruby.”

“That's Dr. Malone!” exclaimed Ruby.

“
Shh!
Listen,” said Flora.

“Margaret showed me your flyer, and there are a couple of chores here we'd love to hand over to you,” continued Dr. Malone. “There's some stuff in the basement that needs to be cleaned out…. Well, I'll give you the details when you call back. You can reach me at the office before six or at home tonight. I'll talk to you later. Bye.”

“And now,” said Flora, waving her hand over the answering machine like a magician, “call number two.”

“Hello, Ruby? Ruby? This is Robby. Is this your answering machine? Ruby? Okay. Mom told me to call you. We have a job for you.”

“Yes! Yes!” squealed Ruby.

“It's unpleasant,” Robby added.

“That's my specialty,” Ruby told Flora with what she hoped was a professional edge to her voice. “Unpleasant jobs.”

“So call back,” Robby finished up.

“Wow, Ruby, that's great,” said Flora. “Two jobs and you only handed out the flyers yesterday. I guess you're in business.”