“We’re it,” Mabel says. “No outsiders. Fewer questions that way.”
“How many guests?”
Ginny cringes. “A hundred? They’re not expecting a huge guest list, given the lack of advanced notice.”
Olivia blows out a heavy breath and shares a look with Samantha. “Wedding cake? You know those are my downfall.”
“We can order one and say that Aunt Pip wants to recreate her wedding while she finally throws Dean to the wind,” Mabel says. “That’ll solve questions about why we’re fixing up the event space too. People believe anything you tell them about Aunt Pip.”
“Inside or outside wedding?” Heath asks. “How many favors will I have to call in to get this set up?”
Mabel and Ginny share a look.
“Outside,” Mabel says at the same time Ginny says, “Caro’s flexible.”
“She’s always wanted an outside wedding,” Mabel says. “You’ve told me that a million times. Even before she was engaged.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Samantha says, suddenly swinging around to look at Ginny. “You haven’t been to a wedding since…you know. Have you?”
Ginny wrinkles her nose. “It’s my sister’s wedding, and we’ll have it however she wants to have it, especially since her fiancé’s willing to pay us, and it’ll befine.”
I don’t need anyone to explain the subtext here, unless somethingelsehappened.
Something beyond Ginny going viral for trying to stop her ex and former best friend from getting married. She went running up the aisle in the church, tripped, and knocked out her front teeth on the edge of a wooden pew.
At least a half dozen wedding guests captured different angles of the moment on video and posted it to the internet.
Ginny’s been here ever since.
Still moving slower since the thing with the eggs the day after I got here.
And anytime I start to apologize again, she tells me to knock it off, that things happen, and this is far from the worst she’s ever had.
Mabel leans forward in one of the wingback chairs and settles her elbows on her knees. “It has to be fine. Hosting events is the only way we’re keeping our doors open unless I can convince Aunt Pip to let us sell whatever’s still good of the stock. And this is exactly the crowd we want—the kind that likes privacy as much as we do. It’s a test run to show off what we can do.”
More looks are exchanged around the room.
“If you have something to say, say it,” Mabel says. “We don’t have time to creep around this.”
“Two months might not be enough time to get everything spruced up around here,” Olivia says. “The gardens are overgrown. The house needs a coat of paint. The mother-in-law house is in need of some modernizations if we’re going to host people here, even after we get the plumbing and the kitchen floor fixed.”
“Between Heath, the plumber, and me, we can have most of that taken care of in the next two or three weeks. Paint’s expensive, but we can handle that too, especially with Dori here. She likes painting. And Cricket’s been tackling the gardens on her own, so we can ask her?—”
“I’ll do it!” I burst into the room. “I want to help. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
Olivia drops her coffee and mutters a softshit.
Ginny startles in her chair and kicks the cat, who moves faster than I’ve ever seen, yowling while she leaps onto the coffee table and knocks over a vase of flowers.
Samantha gapes at me.
Mabel suppresses a smile as she whips a throw blanket off the back of her seat and somehow simultaneously tackles the overturned flowers and Olivia’s spilled coffee.
And Heath?—
Well, Heath is looking at me like he wishes I weren’t here.
Likeheknows I have a crush on him, and he’s only nice becausebe niceis one of very few rules here, and he’s annoyed that Lav’s so obsessed with dragons now, and he’s trying to put up boundaries so that my crush won’t get worse.
