“She has bigger things to deal with.” I take a shuddery breath. “This week—it’s felt very unreal. Good, but unreal. I need—I think I need a little normal to see where my head’s at.”
“You’re going home. San Francisco home.”
I don’t answer out loud.
But it’s exactly what I think I need to process everything and decide what I want to do next.
Chapter 32
Amanda
The rest of the town might be in quite the festive mood, but my heart is hollow tonight.
Not because of Grandma.
She’ll be okay.
She’s retiring immediately, no questions. She had stupidly high blood pressure when she got to the hospital last night, and she’ll be monitored by her doctor regularly while they figure out what happened.
But the bigger point is, she’ll be okay.
I apologized for lying to her. She said apologies were unnecessary between family, and that was that.
It feels . . . incomplete.
But that’s not my biggest heartache tonight.
My biggest heartache is wrapped around all the little reminders that Dane left.
He and Chili went back to San Francisco.
Work emergency is what Lorelei told me when I left Grandma’s room and found her in the hospital waiting room solo. He texted himself and said something had come up and he had to get back ASAP.
He also promised we’d stay in touch, but there’s this lingering question ofhow much of what I felt was real, and how much was all an act, andit has me forcing every smile at what was to be my wedding reception on a beautiful evening in Reindeer Square.
Not that Tinsel needs a reason to celebrate, but everyone insisted on keeping the party in honor of us mending the feud between our families.
It’s not fully mended—my grandmother has some apologizing to do to people outside of our family, and I suspect Dane’s grandparents could own up to a few things with a sinceresorryas well.
But my mom is chatting with Dane and Lorelei’s dad and uncle over a plateful of food from the potluck tables. My uncle and one of my cousins flew in, and they’re talking to Esme’s husband while watching Jojo on the play set at the edge of the park.
Grandma is here too. I can’t look at her without picturing her being loaded up onto the stretcher and into an ambulance last night.
It sucks that you can be trying to do the right thing and still feel so guilty about it.
“You two were so cute together,” Pia says to me over an amaretto sour while we linger on the grass between the gazebo and the food tables. The owners of Holly & Mistletoe insisted on setting up a bar for the party, and they insisted on amaretto sours as the drink of the evening.
In honor of the sweet-and-sour nature of my relationship with Dane.
Hi, my name is Amanda, and I’m irrationally angry at the implication that Dane was the sour one in our relationship.
I know it’s supposed to be an opposites-attract homage, not a true sweet-and-sour thing, but I’m still put out.
“Dane is a very good man,” I tell Pia. “The absolute best. He’s even better than your cake, and you know how much I love your cake.”
The cake that’s displayed inside the gazebo, waiting for someone to cut it.
Probably me.
