Chapter 1 #2
“And finally—the guest of honor,” he announced.
Jaxson rose from his seat at the middle of the table and pulled out the chair next to him for Jolene.
Carly sat across from him, and she gave Jolene a calculating glance before reaching her hand across the table to touch Jaxson’s fingers.
It was the same as if she’d slapped a label on him that read Mine.
Jolene was so busy trying not to look smug at my proximity to Beau that she didn’t notice.
I greeted Beau’s grandmother Mimi Ryan with a kiss on her powdered cheek. “I’m glad you could make it,” she said with a note of reproach, as expected from the family matriarch, her odd eyes—one green, one blue—crinkling at the corners and softening her words.
She sat at the opposite end of the table, next to Samantha—Sam—Beau’s girlfriend and podcast partner.
Sam stood and greeted me with a hug and a warm smile, and I thought yet again that we could have been friends if not for Beau Ryan.
Considering that I didn’t even like him very much, this was an odd sentiment, and one that I didn’t care to analyze too closely.
I was happy to see Cooper Ravenel, who rose from where he’d been seated, then walked around the table to wrap me in a bear hug.
Because of his job he traveled a lot, and I hadn’t seen much of him since the night of the St. Louis Cathedral fund-raiser at the Ryans’, when Beau had almost died.
Cooper had been instrumental in saving Beau and me from the brink of disaster, which was one of the reasons he was at the celebratory dinner.
“It’s good to see you,” he said, his voice and touch vibrating through me.
“Same,” I said, feeling everyone’s eyes on us. “I hope you’re in town long enough for me to show you the house on Esplanade.”
“That’s what I’m counting on. I’ve asked for no travel this coming week, so I’m all yours.”
Cooper had been my teenage crush and first heartbreak, and he had recently moved to New Orleans.
I was concentrating on renovating my cottage and starting my new life, and I wasn’t interested in a relationship beyond friendship, but I’d be lying to myself if I said that I didn’t feel an electric jolt every time I saw him.
I’d yet to ask him about the scar on his face and about his years in California.
If there was anything I’d learned from my stepmother, it was that sometimes not knowing was best.
“Sounds like a plan,” I said as I pulled away.
Everyone took their seats except for Beau. He gently clinked his water glass—no wine or champagne on the table, in deference to me, I guessed—to quiet the chatter.
“Thank you all for coming. It was important that I gather us all together to thank those of you who not only saved my life”—he glanced at me, and I knew we were both recalling his slipping over the edge of the attic walkway as I struggled to hold on, before Cooper miraculously appeared—“but also helped my family find my long-lost sister, Sunny. As I know you are all aware, she is still processing her newly discovered identity, but Mimi and I have great hopes that she will return to us when she’s ready. And we will be waiting with open arms.”
“Hear, hear!” Christopher Benoit, family friend and the manager of the Past Is Never Past, the Ryans’ antiques store on Royal Street, raised his water glass.
The rest of us followed suit, and the sound of glasses clinking sang over the table as we turned to one another to toast the miracle of Beau’s survival and the resolution of the decades-old mystery of what had happened to two-year-old Sunny Ryan.
As I sipped my water I looked around at the smiling faces, knowing that, except for Carly—whose reason for being present at the table wasn’t clear—I’d found my family.
Not a new family, but an extension of my beloved family back home, in Charleston—because, as Melanie and my father, Jack, had reminded me time and again, no matter where I went, there I was.
And, as I was a recovering alcoholic who’d chosen for her new home a city recognized for its partying lifestyle, my family had known even before I did that I would require a support system while I tried to prove to everyone that I didn’t need anyone’s support but my own.
I was halfway through my dessert, crème br?lée—which I didn’t enjoy as much as I should have, because I was too busy watching Sam and Beau eat their bananas Foster for two—when the lights flickered, followed quickly by a sharp crack of thunder.
I looked up and met Beau’s gaze, almost as if we were sharing the same unspoken thought: that just the two of us had noticed that the crystal chandelier above our table had been the only light with interrupted power in the restaurant.
Everyone who lived in the coastal South was used to sporadic storms, even in November.
We were even used to the electricity going out with annoying frequency.
But there was also an odd static in the air, a frisson of something unknown that hovered in the room, and only Beau and I appeared to notice.
The waitstaff continued to refill water and iced tea glasses and deliver coffee in delicate china cups as if nothing had changed—as if the room hadn’t just inhaled and begun to hold its breath. I picked up my glass and held it against my cheek, trying to cool my suddenly hot skin.
I was concentrating on slowing my heartbeat and was barely aware of Jaxson pulling out his chair and moving toward Carly.
I half stood from my chair as Jaxson got down on one knee and produced a black velvet box.
I turned to look at Jolene, whose porcelain skin had gone even paler, the carefully applied blush on her cheeks almost garish in contrast.
Everyone was rising to their feet and clapping loudly as Carly threw her arms around Jaxson’s neck before delivering an intimate kiss to his lips.
Jolene began clapping, too, but it looked as if her frozen white fingers might snap.
I moved to her side and rested my arm around her shoulders.
For a brief moment she leaned against me, before straightening and configuring a smile that even I thought looked real.
As Jaxson slid the ring onto Carly’s finger I turned to Beau to ask him why he hadn’t given us some kind of warning so Jolene could be prepared, but instead of watching Jaxson and Carly, Beau was staring at the floor.
Carly extended her left hand, bright light refracting through the prism of her large pear-shaped diamond. “We need to have an engagement party!”
Her eyes scanned the room before alighting on Jolene. “And I happen to know the best party planner—Jolene McKenna! If anyone can make it the party of the decade, she can!”
Jolene continued to smile, adding a nod as if agreeing to the ludicrous suggestion that she throw an engagement party for Jaxson and Carly. It was almost as unimaginable as LSU throwing a victory party for Ole Miss.
I turned back to Beau, his gaze lifting from the floor to meet mine.
I held my breath in anticipation, knowing before I looked down that I would see a woman’s footprints, each step marked by smeared water spots as if she had just climbed out of a swimming pool.
Since I’d first met Beau, in Charleston, I’d seen such footprints often enough to know without a doubt to whom they belonged—just as I knew that Beau would do everything possible to deny it.
My eyes met Beau’s again. She’s still here.
The unspoken words ricocheted from his thoughts to mine, my heart sinking as I realized what those wet footprints meant.
I’d seen the footprints only once since the incident in the Ryans’ attic, and I’d hoped she’d come only to say good-bye.
Apparently that wasn’t the case. Even though her daughter, Sunny, had been found, Adele Ryan still had unfinished business. And she needed her son’s help.