Jenna set down her knife, wiped her hands on a dish towel, and walked around the corner out of the kitchen. On her porch she saw a man in a black suit wearing Ray-Bans holding a garment bag in one hand and a manila envelope in the other.
“Jenna Thomas.” His voice was much deeper than she’d expected.
“Yes.”
He passed the electronic pad to her in a single, practiced motion. “I need a signature.”
Heneededto go to a Barry White voice-alike competition.
“I told him I could sign,” Blake announced, matter-of-fact, to the room at large.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, direct signature is required.”
“You are a very fancy delivery man,” Blake observed.
“Blake.” Jenna’s tone indicated she didn’t appreciate her daughter having zero filter when it came to her inner thoughts as she electronically signed her name.
Fancy.Her stomach dropped out from under her at Blake’s choice of words. That was the exact term Jenna herself had used to describe mystery bartender’s rental car. This delivery was definitely from DeaconFucking FancySt. Claire.
She wanted to decline the delivery, but she knew that if she did, Blake would never let it go. That would only make it worse. Why couldn’t this have arrived thirty minutes earlier? Just thirty minutes? Her daughter would have been none the wiser.
The man handed her the very fancy garment bag which held an envelope. “Thank you.”
Jenna closed the door quietly behind the departing man in the suit, the weighted click of the latch oddly final, as if she’d just sealed herself inside a submarine headed for uncharted depths. She stood for a moment in the entryway, not sure if her hands were shaking because of nerves or fury or some entirely new emotion that lacked a name. She opened the coat closet and hung the garment bag, navy and heavy, up, and just as she was shutting the door, her daughter shrieked beside her.
“Mom! Youhaveto look and see what it is!” Blake’s voice ricocheted through the corridor, hitting every nerve ending Jenna had left.
Jenna tried for casual, the kind of world-wearyresignation that often worked with salon clients but somehow never with her daughter. “I’ll look later,” she said without making eye contact.
Blake let out a sound that was half shriek, half laugh. “Mom, seriously?! No! You can’t just…you have to look at it!”
Jenna knew, deep in her bones, that she’d entered some kind of cosmic Delusion Land if she thought her daughter would ever let this delivery go unexamined. Why had she ever believed, even for a split second, that Blake would walk away from a mystery package without dissecting it like a frog in biology class? She’d raised Blake to be curious and relentless, a combination that was charming when aimed at math homework and infuriating when aimed at her own mother’s secrets.
She sighed and surrendered, stepping out of the way as she pulled out the envelope from the clear pouch, which was so ornate it looked like it belonged in a time capsule from the Gilded Age. The paper was thick and resisted bending, the kind of stationery that announced, “I am here to ruin your life, but in a tasteful, expensive way.”
“Go ahead,” Jenna said, the words tasting like defeat. “You can look in it.”
Blake’s baby blues grew as wide as gumballs. “Me? Really?”
“Sure,” Jenna said, waving the envelope for effect. “Knock yourself out.”
Blake dove in, her hands reverent as she unzipped the garment bag with a slow, dramatic gesture, an amateur magician revealing her greatest trick.
But Jenna’s attention was on the envelope, which she now opened, careful not to tear the tissue-like liner. Inside was an honest-to-god invitation, complete with gold leaf and an actual wax seal. For a moment, she thought it was awedding invitation, the script was so elaborate. Then she saw the words “For Your Eyes Only” on the flap, and a shiver ran through her, equal parts intrigue and dread.
She slid the card out and found her full government name—Miss Jenna Faline Thomas—at the top, in a font so florid it looked like a Victorian fever dream. Her middle name. No one ever used her middle name. Even her mother, who’d named her after Bambi’s girlfriend, had never said it out loud that Jenna could remember. No one even knew it. Not her two husbands or daughter. How the hell had Deacon St. Claire learned her middle name?
She kept reading, the words swimming a bit as her heart took up a new, double-time rhythm in her chest:
“Your presence is requested at the Hope Falls Charity Gala Ball by Mister Deacon Charles St. Claire for an evening of...
Blake gasped, her voice climbed in pitch like a fire alarm. “Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom!”
“Daughter, daughter, daughter, daughter, daughter,” Jenna chanted back as she kept reading.
…dancing, dining, and debauchery.”
“Ahh.” This time it was Jenna’s turn to inhale audibly as she read the final word, and her inner walls clenched a little.
