From Bad to Wurst by Maddy Hunter

market to attend a sixteen-act Passion play that takes five and a half hours to perform and features eight hundred actors on stage at the same time, buy your tickets now because they sell out fast.”
    â€œWe should do that,” Mom remarked as she gave my knee a friendly pat. “I’d be the envy of every parishioner at Holy Redeemer.”
    I got so excited, my voice sounded as if it had been shanghaied by Munchkins. “You know the name of our church?”
    â€œOf course I know the name of our church. I’ve only been attending the same one all my married life.”
    â€œYou’ve turned a corner, Mom. You’re on the road to recovery!” I leaned toward the seatback in front of me and tapped the crown of Nana’s head. “Mom remembers the name of our parish church.”
    Nana peeked over the top of her seat, doubt in her eyes as she squinted at Mom. “What’s the name of the fella what got elected president last time?”
    â€œLast time?” Mom’s eyes darted wildly in her sockets as she tapped her memory bank. “Uhhh…” She broke out in a sudden smile. “How badly do you need to know? Because if it’s a real emergency, I bet Osmond could tell us.”
    â€œNot that kind of amnesia,” grumbled Nana as she faced forward in her seat again. “ Pfffft .”
    â€œThis little wrinkled woman in front of us,” Mom whispered in my ear. “She’s very crabby. By any chance, is her name Bernice?”
    Okay, so maybe I’d jumped the gun on the turning the corner thing.
    â€œThere’s some great shopping in Oberammergau,” Wally in-formed us as we exited the highway onto a secondary road. “A good majority of the villagers are famed woodcrafters, so if your taste runs toward intricate wood carvings, you’ve come to the right place: nativity scenes, Madonnas, crucifixes, cutting boards, kitchen utensils. And the Ammer Valley is a great area for hiking and sports, so you’ll find some terrific deals on outdoor gear. For those of you who can never have your fill of Christmas and all its trimmings, there are two K ä the Wohlfahrt shops on the main street, selling everything from traditional German nutcrackers to incense smokers to music boxes. We’ll be there in a few minutes, so I’d advise you to start drawing up those shopping lists.”
    â€œAstrid loved Christmas,” Hetty lamented from the aisle seat across from me. “If she was here with us, she’d head straight for those Christmas shops and buy so many ornaments, she wouldn’t have space in her suitcase to carry them all back.”
    â€œWould you have tagged along with her?” asked Zola, who occupied the window seat beside her. Wally had declared open seating on the bus today, so the guest pairings were all over the place.
    â€œI didn’t enjoy shopping as much as Astrid did. It was a recreational sport for her. But I would have tagged along anyway because Astrid was just a fun person to be around. She had Miss Congeniality written all over her.”
    â€œShe was an extrovert, huh?”
    â€œI don’t know about that, but she always wanted to include everyone in what she was doing and never shut anyone out.” Hetty’s voice sounded accusatory as she directed this comment to the seatback in front of her, where Otis Erickson and Gilbert Graves were sitting.
    â€œOh, she was an extrovert all right,” said Zola. “I knew that the moment I laid eyes on her. I bet those stage performances of yours really energized her while they leave you feeling completely drained.”
    Hetty grew quiet. “They do. The noise, the people, playing my clarinet all night—it’s exhausting. It takes me forever to recharge my batteries. But how do you know that? You’ve never seen us play, have you?”
    â€œI don’t need to see you play. The proof is in a person’s eyes—the