Chapter 41
Autumn
I sleep hard, deep and dreamless.
When I slowly rise to consciousness, I can hear Tucker moving in the bathroom. It’s comforting, the everyday-ness of it, until I remember that it’s not my everyday anymore.
It probably never was. This sham version of domestic bliss was only ever that—make-believe. If I let myself think otherwise, that’s on me. Foolish.
Like believing that Jim would stick around through thick and thin.
I open my eyes to find the room still dark. There’s no sunlight peeking through the curtains yet; a quick look at the clock confirms that it’s 5:15. Which makes sense if we’re meeting Hanna at 6:00 to strategize.
The bathroom door opens, and Tucker appears, a towering figure in the slant of light coming from behind him.
“I’ll, um, be in the hall,” he says, and before I can wake up enough to argue, to tell him he doesn’t need to leave—he’s seen everything already after all—the hotel-room door snicks shut behind him.
I ignore the twinges of frustration and hurt I feel and rush myself through a simple morning routine.
No matter what’s going on between Tucker and me, the most important thing is fixing Summer’s wedding, and the sooner we can start on that, the better.
I dress in casual clothes. I’m anticipating that we’re going to be working hard for the first few hours of today to get things back on track.
When we get there, Hanna’s already surrounded by her family—Easton, Sonya, Natalie, Quinn.
She hands us each a couple of phone numbers, and we start working.
Hanna has offered Summer and Jane a choice between an outdoor wedding at Hott Springs Eternal or—if she can find a substitute venue—an indoor wedding at another location.
The sky is threatening, and Summer said she’d prefer to have an indoor wedding if at all possible—less risk of rain, a better situation for Jane’s allergy-suffering mom and cousin.
Needless to say, most of the other venues laugh in our faces—in the nicest possible way. This is the height of wedding seasons.
We’re down to the last couple of venues—and ready to accept the outdoor option— when Hanna unwillingly admits that she hasn’t yet contacted Five Rivers Weddings.
“I don’t want to give them the satisfaction,” she says.
“It’s not like you screwed something up,” Sonya says gently. “Your barn burned down. No matter how vicious they’ve been as competitors, you know you’d help them if the situation were reversed.”
“Would I?” Hanna asks, scowling.
“You know you would.”
“I wasn’t good with mean girls in high school,” Hanna says. “And I’m not any good with them now. Sometimes people say I should play their game…” She shrugs. “But I can’t. I can’t say one thing and mean another or talk behind people’s backs or make subtle digs on social media. It’s just not me.”
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” I ask.
“Most of the time I think so. But every once in a while, I feel like I’m losing a game no one told me the rules for.”
“You want me to make the call?” Sonya holds out her hand for the last slip of paper.
“No,” Hanna says. “I’ve got it.”
We all watch quietly as she has the conversation. As the grim tightness on her face turns to something brighter. When she gets off the phone, she says, “They were supposed to have a wedding today in the big venue space, but the bride has shingles and canceled.”
“Oh, wow, that sucks,” Natalie says. She taps her phone open, messes around a bit, and holds up a reel of a bride pulling up her shirt to show the red, blistered rash on one side of her torso.
The caption scrolls Worst reason EVER to have to postpone a wedding: shingles.
Five Rivers is the bomb, though, and gave us another date in six weeks!
It has garnered a viral amount of sympathy.
“Damn,” Hanna says. “I really hate to feel glad that someone else has shingles. I mean, I’m not glad she has shingles—”
“We know what you mean, Han,” Sonya and Natalie say at the same time.
Tucker drives us over to Five Rivers Weddings. I’ve never seen the other venue, since the decision to go with Hott Springs Eternal happened before the first time I arrived in Rush Creek.
The property is on the Mionet River. Five Rivers’s big Colonial revival house looks smug.
Maybe that’s because of what Hanna told me about the venue’s business practices.
Or maybe it’s all the symmetry and columns and bits of architecture whose names I don’t know.
The house looks like a mean girl, and I think about how much I love the down-to-earth hominess of the Hott Springs ranch and its Western-wedding vibe.
This house looks like it might talk about you behind your back.
Hanna must feel the same way because she sighs heavily as we approach.
It must feel an awful lot like defeat for Hanna to be giving Five Rivers this wedding all packaged up with a bow.
In a moment of weakness earlier I looked at social media, and sure enough, the story of the Hott Springs fire is everywhere, and so is Five Rivers’s gallant rescue of Summer’s wedding.
By the end of the day today Five Rivers will be every bride-to-be’s hero.
And none of this is Hanna’s fault.
Five Rivers’s owner, Rena Oran, greets us at the front door. “You poor things!” she exclaims to Summer and Jane. “I’m so glad we can help.”
I squint at Rena. She gives me a big, open smile. I don’t trust it, maybe because of the mean-girl thing.
Do I do that? Smile when I don’t mean it?
I think I might.
I think I might want to stop.
Rena gives us a quick tour of the space, ending up in the enormous main entryway, where the ceremony will happen.
Two staircases on either side descend and converge into one big central staircase, like something out of a fairy tale or a Regency TV series.
The brides will each come from one side, meet in the middle, and descend the big central staircase for their grand entrance.
Four archways lead to slightly smaller side rooms, where the reception will take place, and behind the staircase, there are doors leading to the kitchens.
In the big main ceremonial space, Hanna’s own people and hired vendors are quickly and efficiently working to remake Jane and Summer’s wedding.
“What can I do?” I direct the question to Rena and Hanna.
“At some point I’ll need you to go back to the hotel and pick up Summer and Jane,” Hanna says. “But in the meantime how would you feel about recreating our photo work from last night?”
She sets me up with new copies of the photos (“Thank fuck for digital files and my photo printer”), frames that she found by rousting a local craft-store owner out of bed early, and a crap-ton of Command Strips.
I frame all the reprinted photos. I try not to look around to see what Tucker’s doing, but periodically I hear the low rumble of his voice, and my gaze is drawn in his direction.
Right now, he’s helping the florist twine white flowers around the posts in the central staircase.
He’s incongruous, crouching, his big hands working the thin stems—except I remember how nimble those fingers are.
This is torture. Now I just want this weekend to end so we can go our separate ways and I don’t have to think about what could have been.
What was.
I force myself back to the task at hand.
I need to watch the video I took of the photos in Hanna’s barn so I can figure out what order we originally put the photos in. I pull it up on my phone, grab a piece of paper, and prepare to make a list.
As the camera pans across the kitchen door, something catches my eye. Something I ignored when I took the original video.
There’s someone in the kitchen.
I use two fingers to zoom, but the effect is too blurry.
I wonder if Tucker has the equipment to analyze video. To fill in the blanks in the blur.
I wonder who was in the kitchen that night.
I’m about to cross to where he’s still crouching, flowers in hands, when I see a woman darting out of one of the kitchen doors, under the staircase, and into the other kitchen entrance.
At first it’s just a flicker of awareness. Something about the posture—or maybe the slight sneakiness of her movements.
And then my brain kicks in with recognition.
It’s her.
Sienna Calder, the—ostensible—Blue Iron employee we chased to Girls’ Night Out Gifts a few days ago.
The pieces fall into place for me.
I look up and catch Tucker’s eye. For a second I feel a thrill—he was watching me! And then I remember that for now, that’s still his job. His duty. He still believes I’m in danger.
He looks away as soon as I meet his gaze.
Okay, that’s fine. He’ll follow me if I leave; I know he will.
Because as hurt as I am about where he’s left this, I know he’ll make sure I’m safe. It’s the one thing I have no doubt about—and never did.
It’s what I whispered to him when he showed up at the fire, after I climbed out of the window and threw myself into his arms: I knew you’d come.
Even if you won’t stay.