“Bill,” Dan says, shaking my uncle’s hand. “How’s retirement treating you?”
“Just fine,” he says, patting his belly. “What’s new on the council?”
Bill shoots me a naughty wink, and I cringe inwardly, praying he won’t go there. Dan being elected for town council was what started this whole mess in the first place. In addition to making him insufferable, his elevated status of elected official means he’s always at the center of local news.
“You’ll be pleased to hear they just agreed on the date for next year’s Rib Fest,” Dan says. “Last weekend in July.”
“Good, good,” Bill says. “And what about this new subdivision over on the south end of town? That’s not going ahead, isit?”
“I don’t see why not,” Dan says, taking on that air of superiority I hate so much. “We need the houses.”
“We also need the soccer fields,” Bill replies. “Build over all of them and you’ll have no place to host Rib Fest.”
Dan looks like he’s gearing up for a lecture, his chest rising on a huge inhale. Luckily for us, Mom appears again. I swear this woman has put a tracker chip onme.
She rounds us all up and tells us to make our way toward the patio. They want to do the toasts before weeat.
“Stay with your uncle,” she tells me, squeezing my arm with force.
“Ouch,” I squeak, rubbing the spot above my elbow.
“Oh, enough of this,” Bill says, shooing my mother away. “Go make yourself busy, Linda. She’ll be just fine.”
I shoot him a grateful look, and he threads my arm throughhis, giving my hand a gentle pat. I can feel eyes on me from every direction as we make our way across the lawn.
—
To understand this engagement party, it’s crucial to understand the one that came before it.
Shannon had long since dropped out of university to move home and be closer to Dan, who was now working in local government. The two of them had been living with my parents, saving up to purchase their first house.
Around this time, Dan began voicing his desire to become mayor someday, toying with the idea of running for town council. My sister was, of course, his unpaid campaign manager and First Lady-in-waiting. The two of them hit the local campaign trail with enthusiasm.
They needn’t have bothered. There were ten town council seats and eleven candidates, and one of those candidates was a well-known golden eagle from the area. Seriously. It was a political statement from a local activist group, trying to protect some woodland on the edge of town. Though legally an animal can’t serve on a municipal government, let it be known that Dan only beat the eagle by fifty-seven votes.
Anyway, he was elected. As an illustrious member of town council, he was now being paid to give people his opinion—a job he was previously more than happy to do for free—and just a few weeks later, the two of them were engaged.
While Dan was out most nights hobnobbing with the town’s elite, Shannon was planning the wedding of the century, a job I was roped into with such regularity that I started to wonder if it was me she was marrying. Dan had many opinions on how he wanted things done but was more than happy to leave the doingof these items to someone else. As a town councilor, he had more important things to think ofnow.
I was home for the week to help Shannon prep for the party. By that point relations between Dan and me had been strained for several years. He thought I was an annoying brat, and I thought he was a selfish prick. The two of us could barely get through a single family function without trading insults the second Shannon’s back was turned.
The day before the party I was meeting some friends for lunch, waiting at the bar for the others to arrive. Two men had parked themselves at the bar on the opposite corner from me and were catching up over a beer while waiting for their chicken wings, each filling in the other on the details of their lives and their kids’ soccer schedules, until they moved on to a story that had been making the rounds through town hall this week. Had he heard that Councilwoman Howard was having an affair?
I opened my phone and started typing out the details to Shannon, who I knew would delight in this tidbit of gossip. She and I had already lost hours discussing Councilwoman Howard—the realtor Shannon worked for had sold a house to her last year, and she often attended the same events as Shannon and Dan, including a recent charity golf tournament where she got drunk and called her husband a prick in front of the entire table.
That can’t be true, the second man said. It is, the other insisted. His information had come from a verified source. The affair was with another council member, on town property. They were working late together on some big planning proposal. They’d been caught in the parking lot.
The mention of the planning proposal made my blood run cold. Dan was working on a project that sounded a lot like that. And he’d been pulling quite a few late nights.
The wings arrived, and the conversation moved on, but my heart was racing. My first instinct was to reject it—Councilwoman Howard was married, and more than a decade and change older than Dan. But other details pressed on the edge of my mind, ones that felt all too relevant now. Dan had worked more late nights than I would have thought necessary for a town councilor, and recently, he’d lost all interest in the wedding, something Shannon would chalk up to the stress of his new job if anyone mentioned it at the family dinner table. But you could tell it bothered her. There was a neediness to her interactions with Dan that seemed recent tome.
I spent lunch counting down the minutes until I could leave, and then raced back to the house, hoping to find Shannon alone. I came face-to-face with Dan instead, when he walked through the front door just a few minutes after me. We were the only two people home. I asked him about his day, and then his planning project, and all the late nights he’d been pulling. He condescendingly told me they were working overtime to get everything done before the deadline. I said:Really? I heard it’s because you’re fucking Councilwoman Howard.
I knew it was true as soon as I said it out loud. His denial sounded so lame. I told him to tell Shannon before the party, or I would. The next morning, the house was buzzing with activity, everyone rushing around to get ready. It was clear Shannon knew nothing, she was too serene. I tried in vain to talk to her, but she brushed me off, flitting away for a hair appointment with her bridesmaids, then strategically arriving late to make her grand entrance.
—
I spent the afternoon staring daggers at Dan from across the lawn, not that he noticed—he didn’t dare look in my direction.It incensed me that he wasn’t more bothered about any of it. If anything, as the day went on his confidence grew, and by the time the toasts rolled around, Councilman Dan was out in full force.
