Chapter 28
Autumn
Prom is held in the large barn, the same place where Summer and Jane’s wedding will happen the day after tomorrow.
The barn has been completely transformed.
The room is awash with blue, green, and purple shifting light.
Translucent, shimmering fabric hangs in sheets from the ceiling, creating the feeling of being undersea.
There are balloon-and-streamer jellyfish and elaborate fish and seahorses swimming among the fabric sheets. The music throbs through the room.
Prom may have been my idea, but Hanna and her staff have done a spectacular job of bringing the vision to life.
“It’s so beautiful!” Summer says, aglow in a mermaid dress, her hair piled on her head, clinging to Jane’s arm. “Omigosh. Look!” She points at an enormous wooden chest, submerged in a pile of sand on the ocean’s floor. “Buried treasure!” She does a little dance of delight in place.
Jane watches Summer, transfixed. The room might as well be invisible to her. Summer is the spectacle.
I get it. My sister’s joy is a thing of beauty.
I get it in another way, too. The room is mesmerizing, but I’m having trouble looking away from Tucker in a tux.
It’s a life-changing sight, the tailored-for-him fit of it over those broad shoulders, the way he, and the suit, narrow to the point of a triangle, the cut of the pants over his beautiful ass.
The bob of his Adam’s apple above the dip between the points of his bowtie as he drags his eyes away from the hem of my dress and back to my face, meeting my grin with a sheepish nose wrinkle.
What I love most is how put-together he looks: crisp and cinched up and buttoned down.
I’m the only one who knows what it looks like when he’s undone.
Everyone else only sees this version.
They’re both glorious.
“You like the dress,” I observe.
“You like the tux,” he returns.
“Lucky us.”
He’s almost smiling.
Dinner is sushi and dumplings, served from huge platters along the walls.
We pile our plates with food. The two of us head for a table, where we’re joined by my parents and some of Summer’s high school friends.
The mood is buoyant—everyone loves the decor and the food, and the ones who know Summer best love that she’s getting a second chance at prom.
“This is amazing, Autumn,” Dottie says.
“Make sure you tell Hanna,” I say. “The wedding planner. It’s all her.”
“I will,” she says. “But it was a good idea. A really good idea.”
She gives me a hug.
When we’ve had enough of stuffing ourselves, Tucker asks if I want to dance.
I say yes, of course.
And holy shit, who taught the big guy to dance?
Like, he can lead.
I thought we were just going to sway around awkwardly. But he can twirl me and dip me, and when the slow songs play, he can move me around the floor like I weigh nothing and don’t have two left feet.
Periodically I catch a glimpse of Summer, who looks like she’s in absolute heaven. She dances in Jane’s arms with her eyes closed and a goofy smile on her face, and every time I see her, she’s beaming or laughing or hugging someone.
For the first time since this wedding started, I feel happy.
And the thing is I know it’s because I let myself be sad earlier.
I wrap my arms tighter around Tucker because I don’t think I would have found my way to that piece of wisdom without him.
I look up at him, and there’s that trace of a smile on his face. Not the resting grumpy face that he wore when I first met him. So maybe, just maybe, he’s been able to find a little bit of happy.
I’m about to ask him that when something brushes by my foot. At first I think it’s Tucker’s foot, but then it happens again, and I jerk back because whatever it is isn’t attached to Tucker…and it’s…alive.
I shriek. And jump into Tucker’s arms.
Luckily, he catches me and lifts me up because I’m gradually realizing that the floor is crawling.
It’s all mice.
I’m not the only one shrieking. Or trying to climb the nearest structure, person, or decor element—curtains, columns, coatracks. It’s mass chaos. The orderly prom has devolved into a scream-and-flee-fest.
There are only a few people with two feet on the floor, evincing some amount of calm.
One of them is Tucker, who carries me to the edge of the dance floor and sets me on top of a table.
Another is Hanna, who is issuing directions in an appropriately bossy way, ushering the most hysterical people out of the room, giving orders to the lodge staff, making phone calls with one hand while she comforts Summer with another.
My sister eventually joins me on the table. By now the lights are on, the music has stopped, and more than half the party has fled.
“My prom.” She surveys the wreckage, woeful.
“I’m so sorry, hon,” I say.
“It’s not your fault. Not in the slightest.”
I’m afraid she’s wrong. Because, thanks to that off-the-cuff “about me” video I posted months ago, the whole world knows how much I hate mice. Someone could easily have decided to see how I’d react to a flood of them.
I’m starting to realize that even though all this time I’ve hoped my dad was overreacting, it’s entirely possible someone has it out for me.
This would be a great way to get to me.
It gives me a cold shiver.
“Summer, Autumn, I swear I had nothing to do with this,” a plaintive voice says below me. The crowd opens, and my brother stands at my feet.
I can see from the look on his face that he’s telling the truth.
He’s staring at Summer’s miserable face and he’s as wrecked as I am about it.
Haru knows as well as I do how much that prom meant to Summer—he was a freshman in high school that year, and he was with me when she cried about not being able to go.
In the car, on the way home, he cried, too.
He even tried to bring prom to her in her hospital room—and it was the one thing that made her smile that week.
“Of course you didn’t,” I say quietly. “Of course you didn’t—”
“But I get why you might think—” He rubs a hand over his face. “But this wasn’t me. I—”
“Maybe nobody did it,” my dad says. “Maybe Hott Springs Eternal has a mouse infestation.”
My dad still hasn’t totally forgiven Hanna for some of the earlier things that went wrong. If I didn’t know about the sabotage factor, I might think he was right, too.
“Like, just like that?” Nessa asks. “They appear out of nowhere?”
“It started raining outside. The rain might have driven them in.” That’s Jane.
My eye catches Tucker’s, and he shakes his head. No way, he’s saying. No way was this an act of nature.
This was sabotage.
The question is who was the target? The Hott family?
Or me?
“Autumn,” Haru says. “I need to tell you—”
Oh, crap! Right! He messaged me earlier!
“Haru!” my dad calls. “I need your help with this one!”
“Find me later!” I tell Haru, and, looking torn, he nods and heads back toward where our dad has cornered a mouse.
“Hanna,” I call to her. “Can I help with something?”
She shakes her head. “No. I don’t want to put a bridesmaid to work.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “I’m here. And I’m…” I look around myself, at the table I’m standing on and the furry chaos on the floor below. “Not going anywhere for a while.”
Hanna surveys my situation, bites her lip, and says, “In that case, how would you feel about making a few phone calls for me?”