She collapsed into her chair and looked at the dress. The top was salvageable, but the entire skirt needed to be cut off. She didn’t have enough fabric for a whole new skirt, which meant she either had a mismatching skirt, or …
She groaned. No. She promised herself she’d never make another short dress again. But she didn’t have any other option. At least Eliana had inherited her long legs.
Her phone buzzed and buzzed, but she ignored it to finish the dress, until finally a knock at the door pulled her from her sewing haze.
She opened it with trepidation, half expecting to find Gerard, but luckily she hadn’t seen him since he’d come to the house. After he’d arrived so unexpectedly, she’d insisted he leave before her family saw him, promising to talk soon, but had avoided him ever since.
Rosa stood there, an annoyed expression on her face. “Vamos. The meeting is about to start.”
“What meeting?” Winnie asked.
Rosa’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sick? Your voice is hoarse. I’ll make you some honey tea later, but we need to go.” She tugged on Winnie’s arm, and Winnie—no match for Rosa on a mission—followed her out.
When they arrived to the conference room at The Palms, everyone was already there, but they weren’t casually chatting like usual. Instead, they glanced warily at one another, or stared at their phones like they always complained their grandchildren did.
“Winnie and Rosa are here,” Nancy said. “Let’s get started. First, an update, Winnie.” She looked at her expectantly.
“Oh, right.” What update could she give? That she’d been too busy to come up with more matchmaking schemes? “I think we need to take a hiatus until the wedding.”
She expected an argument. A reminder that Eliana was going home after the wedding. For someone to offer to step in and help, or come up with a brilliant wedding-matchmaking plan that would clinch the deal between those two.
Instead she got five murmurs of agreement, and from Polly, one half-hearted, “Alondro said they looked pretty cozy at salsa and salsa, though Bruno said they were incompetent, and he’s never doing that again.”
They all knew Bruno didn’t mean it. He’d be running another cooking class by the end of summer, but he liked complaining as much as he liked cooking.
“Okay, well that’s settled,” Don said. “We’ll meet again after the wedding.”
“Meeting adjourned,” Nancy said.
Everyone filed out, except for Winnie, who sat in stunned silence. Polly was the last to leave, so Winnie grabbed her by the belt loop and held her back. Polly always loved a good gossip session.
“What’s going on?” Winnie asked.
“You don’t know?” Polly asked.
It took all of Winnie’s willpower not to motion with her hands for Polly to hurry it up.
Polly lowered her voice, even though it was just the two of them in the room. “No one trusts anyone anymore. Who is keeping secrets from everyone? And more importantly, who is revealing all these secrets?”
Winnie felt like she’d swallowed one of her huge pills wrong.
“In the Secret Seven, only Don, Rosa, and Walt haven’t had anything revealed about them yet. Harry has that country record, Nancy with the election, I dye my hair black, and you and Horace with the Smitty rivalry.”
Winnie’s relief nearly overwhelmed her.
“Everyone’s thinking the culprit must be someone who won’t reveal any secrets about themselves, so it’s just a process of elimination, but there are still at least a hundred people who haven’t had secrets revealed about them yet. Don, Rosa, and Walt swear it’s not them—and you know it’s not me. I can’t even remember how old I am half the time, much less everyone’s pasts—but since there’s a possibility, everyone’s wary.”
Winnie nodded, seeing what she meant. “Then add to that the fact that we’re learning things about our friends that they never told us.”
“It’s hurtful to realize they don’t trust us enough to tell us these things.”
“But everyone has things they’d rather stay in their past,” Winnie defended. “It’s not about trust but moving on.”
“I agree,” Polly said. “So how do we get the rest of them on board?”
“I don’t know.” Winnie rested her chin in her hand.
“In the meantime,” Polly said. “You probably haven’t heard about the silver fox, either.” She shimmied her shoulders.
