I go kiss Auntie Sue, who’s seated at the table of honor in her gold-trimmed wheelchair decorated with pink ribbons and a Happy Birthday sign tied to the back. Her daughter, Matilda, spoons a bite of applesauce into Auntie Sue’s mouth and wipes her face with those fancy cloth napkins the hall puts out. Auntie Sue’s son, Jeff, sits on her other side, pretending to look helpful but not really doing much of anything.
“Hey, Auntie Sue.” I kneel down next to her and whisper into her ear, “Today’s going to be one of those long ones, isn’t it? You’re the birthday girl, but I’m not so sure you wouldn’t rather be somewhere else.”
Auntie Sue turns to me and gives a twitch of her eyebrow. She doesn’t speak in words, not anymore. But we’ve always been close, from when she tried in vain to teach me how to knit to when we went swimming together in the town lake when I was little. She worked at Union Bank too, as a teller, years ago before she became a wife and a mother. She spoke of her job with such affection and enthusiasm, and she’s part of the reason I went into the financial industry. She’s our family leader, and just because she can’t talk doesn’t mean I understand her any less.
“It’s Purgatory,” my cousin Stacey whispers to me as I leave Auntie Sue and pass her table. “Today is Auntie Sue’s ninetieth birthday party. We’re all here, her closest relatives, about to stuff our faces with her cake and dance to her songs, and she can’t even feed herself anymore. Purgatory, I’m telling you, Olivia. She’d be better off deciding to die.”
“It’s not her time yet,” I say softly as I walk toward my parents’ table. “Timing is in God’s hands, after all.”
“Hey, baby sis. How’s it going?” My brother, Sheldon, older than me by a year and a half, greets me as he cuddles with his fiancée, Cara, at the table.
“Couldn’t be better,” I say as I take a seat across from him.
He chuckles. “It’ll be okay.”
Never knowing when one of the milling cameramen will be snapping a photo, I try to keep my expression neutral. “Right. Tell me that in about a month when all the gossip has died down.”
My oldest sibling, Daphne, calls out a hello to me as she urges her husband, Todd, into his chair. She wants him at the far corner so he can tend to their five-year-old, Alec, and Daphne can then sit across from him with their two-year-old, Amy. As a camera bulb flashes in her face, Daphne grits her teeth into a pained smile as Todd teases her about being uptight while he tosses a pretzel up in the air and Alec runs to catch it with a screech. Daphne slides into her seat, dragging a screaming Amy onto her lap. I smile at her sympathetically, wondering as I look at her worn face when my sister stopped looking happy.
Cybil, Auntie Sue’s only living sibling, dashes up to our table nimbly, not looking close to her eighty-eight years. Her daughter, Patsy, follows her wearily. Patsy nearly looks as old as Cybil, certainly as worn. She looks tired like Daphne, I realize as I take a closer look at my own sister, who’s now fighting Amy for her plastic drinking cup so she can refill it with juice.
“Olivia!” Patsy says as she and Cybil head straight for me. “How brave of you to come today.”
I nod, hearing Sheldon’s muffled laughter across the table. “Nice to see you both.”
“That’s what family’s all about, isn’t it?” Patsy says. “They always have your back even when you’re lying flat on the ground.”
“I’m sitting up and feeling fine,” I say cheerfully, giving her the thumbs up as a photographer’s flash blinds me temporarily.
My father, God bless him, rises from his chair to give a birthday toast to Auntie Sue, and Cybil and Patsy hurry off to their seats.
I let out a breath of relief. For the next five minutes, no one will be talking to me or about me.
God, this party is already never-ending.
“Olive.”
One word, spoken quietly in my ear, is all it takes to change my entire mood. My body lights up at the sound of the voice I’d know in my dreams. Low, sexy, and unmistakably his.
Jenson’s here.
“J,” I say softly, without turning around.
“God, it’s been so long, Olive. Since I even saw you…”
“The holiday party last year.”
“Right.”
His warm breath tickling my neck sets my pulse racing. He must be at the table behind me. Did he slip in once Dad started talking? No way was he in the room when I sat down because I wouldn’t have missed the telltale shivers that always run through me when he’s around.
“I got your message.”
“Crap.”
A low, sexy chuckle hits my ears. “It was to the point.”
“I was drunk,” I say.
