The community center door bangs open, and one of the daytime Gingerbread House staff comes dashing in, wearing an apron and a hairnet.
“I found it!”she shrieks. “I found the engagement ring in a ball of dough!And look at it—the mixer didn’t mess it up a single bit.”
She lifts the ring, making it sparkle in the light.
My breath catches in my throat.
The mixer didn’t mess it up.
I look at Grandma.
She stares back at me with the guiltiest of guilty expressions on her face as her entire complexion goes paler than real winter snow.
“Amanda,” she starts, and then she clutches her chest.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” I say. “You arenotpulling that again.”
“Sincerely, Vicki, don’t do this,” Mom says, quieter, but everyone can hear her.
“I didn’t want—” Grandma starts, but she doesn’t finish.
And that’s when I start to realize she might not be faking it this time.
What’s whiter than snow? That’s Grandma’s face. Her breathing is rapidly growing labored, and she’s reaching for one of the tables for support.
Mr. Briggs leaps to her side and holds her while she slumps against him, gasping. “Someone call 911,” he says. “I think this one’s real.”
Chapter 31
Dane
Does anyone like hospitals?
I don’t. They smell like badly covered sickness and death.
Amanda looks as comfortable as a fish in a desert. Her mom can’t sit still and keeps pacing the waiting area. Lorelei’s picking at her fingernails.
She doesn’t merely dislike hospitals. She actively hates them.
But she’s here.
“I’m sorry,” Amanda says one more time.
“This isnotyour fault,” her mom says.
I squeeze her knee while a new kind of guilt beats me over the heart. “It’s not your fault,” I agree.
It’s mine.
I’m the one who insisted we stay fake engaged. I egged her on. I pushed to get the engagement ring. I kissed her in public to sell this.
And then I fell for her for real.
How could I not?
But I fell for her for real, and I just wanted to be with her more and more, and I lost sight of the fact that we could be doing real damage to our families in our pursuit of ending the feud.
I know we did this for the right reasons.
