“Yes!” I reply, looking up at him. “Tomorrow night?”
“I’ll double-check with Mom to make sure she hasn’t got any dinner plans, but at the very least, let’s go out for drinks.”
“Perfect. I don’t know how I’m going to get through the day.” I sit back down and spin around to face my desk.
“Why don’t you go home and tell Mellie now?” he suggests.
I shake my head. “I want to make her dinner or something. Build up to it.”
“I’m so happy for you, Gracie.”
To my surprise, he presses a kiss to the top of my head. I beam at him.
“Thanks. I’m so happy too.”
Jackson very sweetlyoffers to drive me to a lovely little deli in town after work and drop me home afterward.
I glance across at him as he pulls up outside Mellie’s house. “Thank you so much for doing this.”
I did not fancy walking all the way into town and traipsing back up half a mountain with my purchases. It’s a small mountain, and really more of a hill, but still.
“Anything for you,” he replies with a smile.
“I’ll let you know how it goes.” I reach for the door handle.
“And I’ll get back to you about tomorrow too,” he says.
“Cool.”
As I’d hoped, Mellie is in the lower paddock on the other side of the house, refilling Rudie and Bennie’s hay, so she doesn’t see me sneak in. I prepare a platter with cheeses, cured meats, olives, fruit, nuts, and crisps and take it with a basket of bread—and a bottle of chilled champagne on ice—out to the table on the top terrace.
Only a few minutes later, she bustles in through the kitchen door.
“Hello you! How was your day?” she asks.
“Good.”
“What’s that smile for?”
“Do you need to freshen up?”
“I was about to jump in the shower.”
“Go and do that and then I’ll fill you in.”
She looks intrigued as she heads into the corridor. I don’t think she bothers with a shower because she’s back in the kitchen in a fresh cream linen dress in a matter of minutes.
“Tell me,” she says with a clap of her hands and a shrug of her shoulders.
The hand-clapping is another trait I’ve inherited from my grandmother, I realize with a smile as I wave toward the terrace.
She spies the champagne and her eyebrows jump up. “What are we celebrating?”
She cries with joy when I tell her. We both do.
We hug and pop the champagne cork and when we’re one glass in and the bubbles have gone straight to our heads, we FaceTime Mum.And…she answers.
“Maybe I need to come and see you there for Christmas after all,” she says when I’ve filled her in.
