Chapter Ten
Ten
Mom and Dad are driving up north to visit some friends this morning, so it’s decided that Shannon will drive me to the airport, even though I tell them over and over I’ll just take a taxi.
Dad is scandalized at the suggestion. We’re not the kind of people who let one of our own spend seventy-five bucks on a cab ride.
Mom insists she wants to lock the house up as they’re leaving, refusing reasonable suggestions like leaving me with a spare key or letting me exit through the garage. In her infinite wisdom she decides it makes the most sense for me to sit outside and get some fresh air.
“It’s a beautiful day,” she reasons, like she is in fact doing me some big favor here, and then they go, leaving me on the front step to wait for Shannon, who won’t be here for almost an hour…exactly the amount of time it would have taken me to get a taxi to the airport.
The Wi-Fi signal carries to the front lawn, so I can at least get some work done while I wait. In all honesty, though, I just lurk around the company Slack channels aimlessly, which is exactly how I notice the precise moment the little green dot beside Connor’s name flickers to life.
ANNIE: Hey good morning
ANNIE: It’s your favorite strategist
His reply is immediate.
CONNOR: Oh hey Ben
ANNIE: I meant me, actually
CONNOR: But you said favorite…
I decide not to dignify that with a response.
ANNIE: I just sent over that report you asked for
CONNOR: Wow. Speedy
ANNIE: What can I say, I’m amazing at my job
CONNOR: Where did you pull the data from?
ANNIE: Nowhere. I made it up. Was I not supposed to do that?
CONNOR: No that’s fine, that’s exactly how I do it
I’ll say this for Connor: he never misses a beat. It’s refreshing to talk to someone where you don’t have to explain you’re kidding all the time.
CONNOR: I thought you weren’t working today
ANNIE: I’m not, just finishing a couple of things before I head back to nyc
ANNIE: Which brings me to what I really came here to tell you…
CONNOR: Let’s hear it
ANNIE: I’ve got my fun fact
CONNOR: We’ve been here before
ANNIE: No seriously
CONNOR: This one better be good
So far Connor has rejected the three fun facts I’ve attempted to give him on the grounds they’re not “fun enough,” which is rich considering his is essentially a humblebrag about how good he is at chess, the least cool game in the world.
But all his talk about competitions got me thinking. This time, I think I’ve finally got it.
ANNIE: So there’s this ice cream shop in our town and when I was a kid they ran a competition where you could invent your own ice cream flavor and if you won they’d make your flavor
ANNIE: You had to do everything—come up with the flavor, the name, design the carton, all of it
ANNIE: I was OBSESSED with this competition
ANNIE: I took it super seriously
CONNOR: That adds up
ANNIE: I entered multiple times with multiple flavors
He beats me to the punch before I can finish typing out the end of the story.
CONNOR: Did you win?
ANNIE: Excuse me, can you WAIT
CONNOR: Sorry
CONNOR: Continue
ANNIE: I won!
CONNOR: haha
CONNOR: What was the flavor?
ANNIE: Sorry, that’s not part of the fun fact.
CONNOR: Oh come on
I’m so busy grinning down at my computer screen that I miss the sound of Shannon’s silver Mercedes swinging into the driveway, and hastily type brB before slamming the laptop shut and shoving it into my bag. There’s a faint mechanical buzzing, and then her head appears.
“I popped the trunk.”
The window rolls back up, and I wheel my crappy shell suitcase around and dump it in, closing the trunk with more force than I intended. I brace for her reprimand when I open the passenger side door, but she says nothing.
Apparently we’re being nice today.
“Do you have your passport?” she asks when I buckle in.
“Yes.”
“Wallet?”
“Yep.”
“House keys.”
“Got ’em.”
“Phone?”
“Jesus, Shannon, yes. I have everything. We’re good.”
She shifts the car into reverse and looks back over her shoulder. “Well, you better hope so, because I am not turning around.”
“History suggests otherwise,” I mutter, and when she turns back toward me, we exchange little knowing smiles.
Shannon and I shared a car all through our high school years.
We inherited Grandma Ruby’s old Honda, which she had no further use for after a particularly grueling drive to ours for Christmas.
As the oldest, Shannon was of course the one who held the keys—the only time I was allowed to drive was if she needed me as her designated driver—but the perks of being her passenger were numerous.
Since I was paying for a lot of the gas she was using to drive her and her friends around, she couldn’t really refuse to take me with her whenever she went out.
Which meant I spent a ton of my life cruising around with the older kids, absorbing their wisdom, and then driving them crazy by doing stupid childish things, like forgetting my schoolbag.
“Whatever happened to that car?” I ask as we whiz along the main road out of town. “I genuinely can’t even remember anymore.”
“We sold it after Dan took the wing mirror off pulling out of the garage.”
“Ah.”
The introduction of Dan to the conversation kills it stone dead in an instant. Even when he’s not here he’s ruining everything.
My phone’s Slack app buzzes with a notification. I swipe to open it.
CONNOR: You can’t say you won a competition for inventing an ice cream flavor and then not say what the flavor is
ANNIE: Yes I can
I lock my screen, then clear my throat and try again. When in doubt, there is one subject Shannon always wants to talk about. And that is her wedding.
“So how’s the planning coming along? Mom said you guys are thinking September?”
“Maybe. Not sure,” she says. Her hands tighten on the steering wheel.
“Oh?”
Her eyes flick up to the rearview mirror and back again. “There’s just a lot left to figure out. September might be too soon.”
Never would be too soon.
“Like what?”
“Well, they’re putting a new roof on the church at the moment,” she says vaguely. “And that might not be done in time.”
It’s April, but OK. Maybe church roofs take five months. I can’t argue that scaffolding would ruin the vibe.
My phone, now resting in my lap, buzzes again. I discreetly flip over the screen.
CONNOR: Are you seriously not going to tell me?
ANNIE: Ask nicely
“And we haven’t even picked a reception venue,” Shannon adds, oblivious to the fact that my attention is split.
I refocus.
“I thought it was going to be at The King’s Glen?”
The local golf course has been her venue of choice for as long as I can remember.
“A lot of our friends have got married there since I first got engaged. It needs to be different.”
I can’t tell if that’s a dig at me or not, so I say nothing.
It strikes me that Shannon is being incredibly evasive about all of this.
Whether it’s because she doesn’t want to talk about the wedding or just doesn’t want to talk about it with me is difficult to parse.
Like with the engagement party, it might be that she’s made the strategic decision to tell me absolutely nothing until forty-eight hours before.
CONNOR: Please
“What about that new hotel on Main Street?” I suggest. “You know the old post office that they did up?”
“Mmm. Too small.”
“Really? A girl in my year got married there last summer. I swear she had, like, two hundred people.”
“A lot of important people from the town are going to be invited,” is all she says. “The guest list is going to be really big.”
“Will you go into the city then?”
“No,” Shannon says. “Dan is a councilor. We want it to be local.”
“Of course. Makes sense.”
Again, the conversation stalls. What else does one say to their beloved sister after a long period of estrangement that isn’t why did you forgive Dan but not me?
CONNOR: I didn’t want to have to do this but…if you don’t tell me what the winning flavor is I will have no choice but to fire you
ANNIE: That’s not very nice
CONNOR: I’m never nice when it comes to ice cream
ANNIE: There’s…so much to unpack there
“And I’m really busy with work,” Shannon says, as if I’ve raised another point she needs to counter. “I’m coming into my busy season. So it might have to wait.”
Have I heard that right? I have never known Shannon to wait for anything where Dan is concerned. This is the girl who dropped out of university in her final year because doing long distance was unthinkable.
I never got the impression that work was particularly important to her, though let’s be honest, I don’t have a clue what’s going on in her life. I’ve never even been to her house.
Maybe she really is busy. Or maybe…she just doesn’t want to marry Dan.
My heart leaps at the thought. If Shannon is getting cold feet, I will happily make them colder.
“Well, no rush,” I say, trying not to sound eager. “The venue is super important, you need to get it right.”
She breathes a deep sigh (of relief?) as we slow down at a red light. “Exactly.”
A plan is forming rapidly in my mind. If Shannon is having second thoughts about her pending nuptials, maybe all she needs is another option. And I can give her that option. I just need to get her to New York.
“So when will you hear about your conference thing?”
I swear she growls. “They’re sending him instead.”
I am totally baffled by this cryptic statement, and when she points out the window toward a man sitting at the bus stop across from the traffic lights, I’m even more confused.
“They’re sending…that old guy?”
“No, not him,” she says, ever dismissive. “Him. On the billboard.”
Would we go so far as to call the giant poster on the inside of a bus shelter a billboard?
I decide not to quibble. I see what she’s referring to now: behind the old guy waiting for his bus is a life-size image of a shiny real estate man, extra sexy.
Judging by the almost demonic way Shannon said the word him, I’m guessing she is not a fan.
“Who is he?”
“The worst person in the world. And unfortunately, the top salesman last year. He gets the trip.”
“Bastard.” I say it with feeling. Now that I look closer, I mistrust his smolder.
“He is a bastard,” she seethes. “And he wears the worst shoes.”
“That is truly damning.”
“I want to run him over with my car.”
“OK, whoa,” I say, laughing. She went from calm to venomous in a heartbeat. “Let’s just dial it down a little with the murder. You can’t run a man down because you don’t like his shoes.”
The light has changed, and she speeds forward, leaving the bus shelter poster in our rearview and channeling her rage by cutting off another car when she switches lanes.
I watch in fascination as she broods silently, and for the second time in as many minutes I wish I knew what was going on in her life, that I had the context for whatever rivalry she has going on with her co-worker.
Instead, I sit quietly while she works through it on her own and wait for the mist to clear.
ANNIE: So my flavor was called…Coco-nutty. On the carton I drew a picture of a coconut with arms and legs holding a barbell. He had a little speech bubble that said “I’m here to get shredded”
ANNIE: Because it had coconut shreds in it
ANNIE: Get it??
CONNOR: I’m speechless
“Anyway,” Shannon says, picking up the conversation like the last five minutes of white-knuckling the steering wheel never happened. “The trip’s not happening.”
“It still can,” I say to her, tossing my phone out of reach. “You could just come for a visit. I have a few holidays left I could take.”
“I don’t.”
“A weekend, then. Everyone knows you can do New York in a weekend.”
She says nothing.
“Seriously, Shan. It would be so great. We can still go dress shopping. And,” I say, like I’ve come up with the ultimate clincher, “I’ve already scouted out like half the bars and restaurants where they film Real Housewives.”
She cuts me a look. I’ve got her attention.
“They’re all shit,” I warn. “But I do know where they are.”
“I’m not sure. I need to save for the wedding.”
“I have air miles coming out of my eyeballs.”
“Don’t you need them for your own flights?”
“Why? Where am I going? Nowhere, that’s where!”
I’m starting to sound like a peppy travel agent, but I don’t care. I am not letting this opportunity slip through my fingers.
“We can do it the same dates you were already planning,” I tell her. “I’ll look up reward flights right now.”
“I should talk it over with Dan…”
“One weekend,” I plead with her. I feel it in the marrow of my bones: if I can just get her to New York, I can turn the tide and convince her to call off this wedding for good. “Please. I really want us to spend some time together. It’s been ages.”
I didn’t intend to sound so desperate, and I know she’s clocked my tone.
“Fine,” she says eventually. “If you can get a reward flight, I’m in.”