“Daddy, what are you…”
Gigi’s loud cry interrupts us.
“Open my present,” she instructs Logan before she whispers something in his ear and giggles.
Logan searches through the presents until he finds Gigi’s gift.
Before he can open it, Gigi grabs the gift out of his hands and hides it behind her back.
“Logan’s fiancée sure likes the attention, doesn’t she?” Mama comments.
“Mama, hush.”
My mother just cannot whisper.
Logan reaches out to grab the present back from Gigi. She takes off across the stage running, and he follows her. The cameramen are having a field day with their antics.
“Oh, my gosh,” I say to Daddy. “Let it end already.”
“It will, darlin’.” He pats my shoulder. “It will.”
Gigi tosses the wrapped box to one of her sisters in the front row, but Miranda’s not ready for it, and it hits her in the arm. Logan jumps off the stage and with his apologies to Miranda, picks the box up from the ground and jumps back up on the platform, opening it as he goes.
Gigi lets him go and beams at the crowd.
Logan’s opened the gift now. His face turns red immediately. He holds the quilt close to his chest and walks back and forth on the stage, looking out into the crowd.
I step behind Daddy.
Gigi walks closer to Logan. “You love it?”
Logan nods and continues to look out. Daddy shifts to say something to Mama, and that’s when Logan spots me. I look away immediately, right into the questioning eyes of my mother.
“You made that for him, didn’t you?” she says in her best attempt ever to speak in a whisper.
I don’t answer her.
“Macey!” She reaches past Daddy with her hand, but I pull back, and she misses me. “Why would you just give the quilt away to Gigi like that? That was your work, baby, not hers!”
Daddy puts his arm around her and whispers something in her ear, and she shuts up.
By the time all the presents have been opened, I’m leaning against a large oak tree for support.
“Party’s over, darlin’.” Daddy looks over at me from where he’s standing with Mama beside a neighboring tree. “You okay?”
“I’m doing fine.”
I glance across the way at Logan and Gigi as they chat with her parents on stage. Presents and wrapping paper cover the ground around them. “Ben?” I say.
He steps closer, joining me underneath the oak. “Yeah?”
I jerk my thumb in the direction of Logan and Gigi. “What did you mean when you said something’s off with them?” I ask him in a whisper.
Ben turns and looks with me. Logan’s leaning back from Gigi’s arms as she reaches for him, almost like he’s…
“He’s not into her.” Ben’s voice is so certain I flinch.
“He’s going to marry her,” I say stubbornly. “Of course he’s into her.”
