Chapter 32
The next morning, Rick’s Diner looked like an empty movie set save for the small group of people squished shoulder-to-shoulder in booth twelve. Sadie held down the center of the semi-circular bench, with Monique and Ginny to her right and Grant and Rick to her left.
She couldn’t wait for her family to meet Grant, but after making the basic introductions and gushing about the wedding, an awkwardness settled in around them. Ginny’s hands lay uncharacteristically still in her lap, and her phone, usually a sixth finger on her hand, hadn’t made an appearance. Sadie could tell by the thinness of Monique’s lips and the way her eagle eyes rarely strayed from Grant that her eldest sister was sizing him up and it wasn’t going well. Sadie gave Grant’s hand a comforting squeeze, and his palm felt damp in her hand. He had to be even more nervous than she.
The day before had been a non-stop rush, but her sisters and godfather needed time to get to know Grant and admire him the way she did. They would get there, because who couldn’t love Grant? For now, she just had to keep the conversation moving.
She smiled at Rick before saying into a lengthening break in the conversation, “You didn’t have to delay opening the whole diner this morning just for us.”
“I did if I wanted a chance to talk to you and meet your husband,” Rick said. “Otherwise, the place would’ve been packed with people trying to get selfies with the #marriedmudpuppies.” He belly laughed, and it relaxed Sadie a notch.
At least someone was acting normal.
Monique slowly tilted and re-tilted her half full coffee cup so that the liquid came right to the edge each time but didn’t spill out. “Are you planning to get real rings at some point?” she asked no one in particular.
Sadie hoped Grant hadn’t heard the skepticism in her tone, but it felt like a smack to the face to Sadie.
“Oh, of course,” Grant said. “Whatever Sadie wants.”
“Will you help me pick one out?” Sadie asked Monique. “You’re good at making decisions like that.”
“I won’t disagree about me making good decisions, but…” she looked up, her forced smile stopping well short of her eyes, “…no thank you. I’ve got a lot going on at work and I’m staying away from wedding stuff for the next few years.”
Panic burrowed into Sadie’s thoughts like the roots of noxious weeds. Grant’s introduction to the family was not going well. If they didn’t accept him, what then? Her entire world would split in two, that’s what.
“I’d love to go ring shopping,” Ginny said. Sadie appreciated the comment, but coming after Monique’s smack down, the offer sounded more like Ginny throwing Sadie a lifeline rather than genuine enthusiasm. Ginny couldn’t care less about rings…or accessories…or fashion of any kind.
Grant cleared his throat. “Once we’ve got them, I thought maybe we could do a second ceremony for family and close friends? You’re all so important to Sadie, which means you’re important to me, and I feel terrible that none of you were there. My family would like to come, too, and meet you all.”
Sadie brightened. “I love that idea!” She smiled at Grant, and his warm eyes seemed to say back, “We will figure this out together.”
Sadie blinked back the wetness springing to her own eyes. Despite how important Monique and Ginny were to her, how much they had done for her and cared for her, not since her parents died had she felt the sense of safety and comfort she felt when she was with Grant.
“I love it too,” Ginny said, smiling broadly. “It’s not fair we didn’t all get to be there for your wedding. How about you, Monique? Would you like that?”
Monique ran her tongue over her teeth so slowly Sadie wondered if she was counting them. “It’s fine,” she said matter-of-factly, “but where should we hold it? Every place decent will be booked for the next year unless we pay a premium.”
“How about right here?” Rick said.
Sadie sucked in a breath. “In the diner?” She looked at Grant, and he nodded enthusiastically. Letting her eyes travel the space that had been her weekly refuge with her sisters, she imagined the wedding possibilities. The morning light beaming into these windows outshone the finest stained glass. “Oh, could we?” she asked Rick.
Rick dipped his graying head toward her. “Of course! I’m sure it won’t be the first diner wedding, but it will be the best one ever and probably the most famous.” He pushed his errant glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Speaking of which, I seem to recall someone hiding under this table just last Sunday. You’ve certainly made yourself known in a week’s time!”
“I didn’t mean to get famous in a week, but yeah,” Sadie said. “The wedding video is up to thirty million views last we checked.”
“Whoever monetized that is sitting pretty today,” Monique said, sipping her coffee.
Ginny began plunking the ice from her water glass into her coffee. “How much do you think they’ll make? Must be a nice gig to sit around and watch money roll in.”
Monique briefly shifted her X-ray glare away from Grant and toward Ginny. “Don’t start dreaming about creating your own online channel. It’s not that much. Even if you could manage thirty million views on something—and that’s like a bolt of lightning hitting the same spot twice—you’d still need a job.”
Ginny shrugged. “Too bad.”
Again, silence stretched on between them for a little too long. Sadie wanted to talk about their diner wedding, hoping to loop Monique into the excitement of it, but how best to re-introduce the topic? Everything she thought of seemed like something Monique, in her current mood, would take negatively. She sent the tiniest panicked look toward Grant.
“So, what’s it like being godfather to these three?” he asked Rick.
Rick belly laughed again. “I gotta say, it was all pretty straightforward until the Spinster Pact thing.” As one, Sadie and her sisters stiffened stared at Rick. “Oops,” he added. “Is it still a secret?”
Grant tilted his head, his leading man features suffused with confusion. “Spinster Pact?”
“Uh…it’s nothing” Sadie said. “I’ll explain later.” She planned to tell Grant all about it, but not during their first twenty-four hours as newlyweds.
“Yeah, and it’s over with anyway,” Ginny said, giving an unconvincing shrug.
Monique set her coffee onto the table with a clunk. “It’s not nothing and it’s certainly not over—not for Ginny and me. The will treats us each as individuals.”
“Will?” Grant said. “Who’s will?”
For the next few minutes, Monique, Ginny, and Rick took turns filling Grant in on man-hating Great Aunt Lydia, her will, its requirement they remain single till age thirty, and Rick’s role as witness. Grant interjected with occasional questions as Sadie pulled nervously at her curls and contemplated taking up permanent residence under the booth again.
“You gave up a million dollars for me?” he said finally to Sadie.
“Not for you,” she said. “For me—so that I could have you.” Sadie felt a tinge of worry. Would he be upset she’d done this without telling him beforehand? It was a lot of money. Instead of frowning, his lips hitched up at the corners.
He winked at her. “So, what you’re saying is…I’m worth a million dollars?”
“Each one of these is worth a million.” She leaned forward and stole a kiss from his delectable lips. “And in the end, we don’t even need it, do we?”
Monique let out a sound somewhere between a growl and a retch as her eyes barrel-rolled inside her skull. “Right, because all you need is love. Remember that when you come asking me for a house down payment from the million dollars I’m definitely getting.”
“No,” Sadie said, “because Ronny negotiated a million dollar advance on Surf Summer for Grant.” Even Monique’s jaw went slack upon hearing that, and Sadie thoroughly enjoyed the visual. It wasn’t every day she could impress her older sister—at least, not when it came to money.
“A million?” Monique asked. “For one movie?”
Grant nodded as he added, “But I turned it down.”
Monique’s face twitched like a robot short circuiting. “You what ?”
Grant shrugged it off as no big deal, but the glint in his eyes gave away his delight at this little opportunity to toy with his exacting new sister-in-law. “They only offered Sadie a half million, but we all know she’s going to act circles around me and steal the movie, so I made them give her the million and me the half.”
Monique’s angry countenance melted like ice under a hot lamp. Smiling a real smile for the first time since she’d arrived, she raised her water glass. “To my little sister who, despite all my vision boards, beat me to becoming a millionaire.”
“You’ll get there when you turn thirty,” Sadie said when the glass clinking ended, “as long as there’s no hidden Grant Mason’s in your past.”
Monique pursed her lips dismissively. “Nothing to worry about on that score.” She sent Grant the sweetest smile, a real one, and it made Sadie almost as happy as Grant’s proposal had done. Monique looked at them both. “I'm glad he was there for you, and after what you’ve put him through, I know he always will be.” She raised her glass again and said, “Welcome to the family.” Rick and Ginny joined, and Sadie heard both happiness and a tinge of relief in their voices.
“I still can’t believe they dumped Julia Menlo,” Rick said. “Not that Sadie won’t do a much better job.”
Grant shook his head. “Turns out Julia’s made quite a few enemies over the years. It’s sad, really, to think of someone being so successful and yet so disliked.”
“She certainly had an enemy at that party,” Monique said. “Whoever uploaded those videos on the spot knew exactly what they were doing.”
Ginny used her finger to trace something invisible on the table. “They were pretty brilliant, weren’t they?”
“I’ll say,” Grant said. “I would’ve lost my career without them.”
Sadie leaned in to give him a shoulder bump. “I’d already lost mine. Those videos resurrected it.”
“Huh. So, I guess we owe that person some major thanks,” Ginny said.
“If only we could,” Sadie said. “They were uploaded anonymously.”
“Ya don’t say…” Ginny said simply, but an unexpected lilt in her voice caught Sadie’s attention. Ginny must have noticed Sadie giving her side-eye, because her tracing finger came to a stop. “Maybe you can thank them.”
Certain something was up, Sadie swiveled in her seat to face her sister. Ginny’s resting-mischievous-face looked positively devious. A cat that had swallowed an ostrich could not have looked more self-satisfied. “What do you mean?”
Ginny made a show of downing her now cold coffee, though she barely managed it through the impressive smirk on her face. Watching her, it struck Sadie that Ginny had known where Sadie was headed that night. She was also no stranger to online videos. Her memory flashed back to the mysterious server in the yellow coverall standing oddly close during Julia’s meltdown. “Gennifer Heppner, was it you ?”
It was Ginny’s turn to sit back and count her teeth with her tongue. “Let’s just say…one of us did attend your wedding.”
Sadie, Grant, Monique, and Rick tilted back against booth twelve’s vintage bench seat so hard it gave a concerning creak. “What?” they said in unison.
Ginny’s eyebrow arched with impish perfection. “You’re not the only Heppner sister who can blend in with the shrubbery.”
THE END
Thank you for reading Fool Me!
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