12. Mario
Mario
I should have known better than to venture into Thompson’s Hardware on a Saturday morning. In a small town, it was like walking into a lion’s den wearing a meat suit and hoping no one would notice.
“Mario! Just the man I wanted to see!”
June materialized from behind a display of leaf blowers like some kind of suburban ninja. Her hair was extra voluminous today, and she wore a sweater with “Fall in Love” written in glitter across the front. This was June in hunting mode.
“June.” I nodded, already calculating the distance to the electrical tape I’d come for. Fifteen feet. Might as well have been fifteen miles.
“So...” She sidled closer, bringing with her a cloud of perfume that smelled like someone had weaponized a pumpkin spice latte. “Big plans for today?”
“Electrical tape.”
“Oh, Mario.” She laughed, a tinkling sound that set my teeth on edge. “I meant with Lily. Someone saw you leaving her house last night after eleven.”
“We were baking cookies.”
“Is that what they’re calling it now?” She waggled her eyebrows in a way that should have required a permit.
“We were literally baking cookies. For the fundraiser. With Olivia.”
Her face fell slightly, then brightened again like someone had flipped a switch. “But there was chemistry, right? Steam? Sparks? My sources say there was definite gazing.”
“Your sources?”
“I never reveal my sources.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “But it rhymes with Shmolivia.”
Of course. The seven-year-old informant strikes again.
“I really need to get—” I scrubbed a hand over my jaw, realizing I’d forgotten to shave this morning.
“Because Betty from the jewelry store says you were window shopping yesterday.”
My stomach dropped. “I was checking the time.”
“At the jewelry store?”
“They have a clock in the window.”
“Right next to the engagement rings.” Her eyes gleamed with the fervor of someone who’d just found the Holy Grail of gossip. “Very convenient clock placement.”
“June—”
“And Reverend Michael says you haven’t booked the church yet, but December is still available if you’re thinking winter wedding. Though personally, I think spring. Lily loves flowers, and imagine the arrangements she could do with?—”
“JUNE.” It came out louder than intended. Gary from plumbing stopped to stare. Mrs. Henderson from the post office peered around a display of rakes.
“There’s no wedding,” I said firmly. “No engagement. No ring shopping. I was literally checking the time.”
June studied me with the intensity of a detective who’d just found a crucial clue. “You’re panicking. This is panic. Oh my goodness, you’re going to propose, aren’t you? When? Where? Do you need help? I have a Pinterest board?—”
“June, please—” Madonna mia.
“Of course you want to keep it a surprise! Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”
She bustled off, and I knew with absolute certainty that within ten minutes, the entire town would know I was allegedly planning a surprise proposal. Probably with specific details June would invent involving doves and flash mobs and whatever else she’d saved to her Pinterest board.
I grabbed the electrical tape without looking at the price and headed for the checkout, where Gary gave me a knowing wink.
“Nervous about the big question, eh?”
“There’s no big question.”
“Sure, sure.” He rang up the tape with theatrical slowness. “That’s what I said before I proposed to Martha. Denied it right up until I got down on one knee. Course, that was forty-three years ago, before the whole town had Facebook to document every breath you take.”
“Gary—”
“My advice? Don’t overthink it. When you know, you know.”
“I’m buying electrical tape.”
“And I’m selling it to a man who’s got that look.”
“What look?”
“The ‘I’m in way over my head but wouldn’t change it for the world’ look.” He handed me my change with a grin. “Saw the same look in the mirror once upon a time.”
I fled the store and drove straight to Sage & Bloom, needing to warn Lily about Hurricane June and her gossip trajectory. The bell above the door chimed as I entered, and I was immediately hit with the scent of roses and the sound of Lily muttering violent things at her computer.
“Stupid, ancient, piece of absolute—Mario!” She looked up, flustered. Her hair was doing that thing where it escaped from her ponytail in little spirals that made my fingers itch to smooth them back. “What are you doing here?”
“We have a problem,” I said at the same moment she said, “We have a situation.”
“You first,” we said in unison.
“June,” we both said, then stared at each other.
“She got to you too?” Lily groaned, dropping her head to the counter with a thunk. “Let me guess—engagement rings?”
“ Anelli di fidanzamento, ” I muttered, scrubbing a hand over my face. “June practically announced it over the hardware store loudspeaker.”
Lily lifted her head, giving me a weary look. “You only switch languages when you’re really wound up. Which tells me June was worse than usual.”
“Worse? Peggio di un interrogatorio della polizia. ” Worse than a police interrogation.
Her mouth twitched. “Did she get as far as the dove release?”
“Flash mob,” I said grimly. “And church bookings. Possibly doves.”
“Doves?” She looked up, horrified. “She mentioned doves?”
“I might be inferring the doves, but knowing June?—”
The bell chimed again. Mrs. Sage swept in carrying what looked like—no. No, it couldn’t be.
“Mom,” Lily said slowly, “why are you holding bridal magazines?”
“Oh, these?” Margaret Sage tried for innocent and missed by approximately one solar system. “I was just at the dentist, and they had extras. Thought you might want to browse. You know. Casually.”
“Mother.”
“What? A mother can’t share reading material with her daughter?” She set the stack—and it was a stack, at least fifteen magazines—on the counter with a thud. “I’ve marked some venues. Very subtly.”
I could see Post-it notes sticking out like a rainbow of maternal determination.
“December is a lovely time for a wedding,” she continued, not making eye contact with either of us. “Or spring, if you prefer. I’m flexible.”
“Mom, we’re not?—”
“Oh! Mario, perfect. Your mother called me.”
The blood drained from my face. “My mother? Called you?” Dannazione .
“Well, I called her first. Found her on Facebook. Lovely woman. Very enthusiastic.”
She pulled out her phone.
“She wants to FaceTime about traditional Italian wedding customs.”
“No,” I said immediately. “Absolutely not. There’s no wedding to discuss.”
“Of course not, dear.” She patted my cheek with the gentle condescension of someone who definitely didn’t believe me. “But just in case, you should know she’s already planning the menu. Something about seven courses?”
“ Mamma mia ,” I muttered.
“That’s what she said! So cute how you both do that.”
The door chimed again. This time it was Olivia, still in her school clothes, backpack bouncing as she ran in.
“MARIO! You’re here! Did you tell Mom about the proposal?”
Every adult in the room froze.
“What proposal, baby?” Lily asked carefully.
“The one June’s Facebook group is planning! There’s a whole event page. ‘Help Mario Propose to Lily.’ It already has two hundred members!”
“Two hundred?” I felt faint.
“Well, it’s a small town,” Mrs. Sage said reasonably. “People are excited.”
Olivia dug in her backpack with the focus of someone on a mission. “And look! I made this in art class!”
She pulled out what appeared to be a pipe cleaner ring, twisted into a lopsided circle and covered in enough glitter to be seen from space.
“It’s for when you propose to Mom!” She pressed it into my hand with the solemnity of someone passing over nuclear launch codes. “Mrs. Smithers helped me with the sizing. I measured Mom’s finger while she was sleeping.”
“You WHAT?” Lily’s voice pitched up an octave.
“Very carefully! With string! Like a spy! A love spy!”
The pipe cleaner ring sat in my palm, shedding glitter like radioactive fallout. It was ridiculous. It was chaotic. It was perfectly them.
“Keep it safe,” Olivia instructed. “Mom likes morning proposals because her hair looks better before humidity gets it all crazy. And she cries at everything, so have tissues ready. OH! And she pretends she doesn’t like public displays but secretly loves them, so maybe do it somewhere with people, but not too many people. ”
“How could you possibly know all this?” Lily asked faintly.
“June’s Facebook poll about dream proposals. You answered after wine at last year’s Christmas party.”
“I’m moving to Alaska,” Lily announced. “Alone. To live in an igloo where there’s no internet.”
“We could visit!” Olivia said brightly. “Mario likes snow, right Mario?”
Before I could respond, the door chimed AGAIN. This time it was Ben, and he was laughing before he even got inside.
“Dude, I just got three texts asking if I’m the best man. THREE. Gary from hardware says you’re proposing at the Harvest Gala?”
“There’s no proposal!” Lily and I said in unison.
“Tell that to the event page,” Ben said, showing us his phone. “’Help Mario Propose to Lily’ now has a suggested timeline, a color scheme, and the flower shop—sorry, the OTHER flower shop—is offering a discount on rose petals.”
“Traitor,” Lily muttered.
“Oh!” Mrs. Sage brightened. “Rose petals would be lovely. Very romantic.”
“Mom, STOP.”
“I’m just saying, if there WERE a proposal?—”
“Which there isn’t—” Lily interjected.
“—rose petals would be nice.”
My phone buzzed. A text from my mother.
Margaret says December wedding? I book flights?
Before I could even roll my eyes, another message popped up. From my father.
Your mother is crying about grandchildren. Fix this.
A follow-up came seconds later, as if he couldn’t help himself.
Marriage is for after the podium. Don’t waste time. Get back to racing.
Then June.
The Facebook group needs to know your ring size. For reasons.
“I need air,” Lily said.
“I need a drink,” I said.
“I need a snack,” Olivia added. “Making jewelry is exhausting.”
Ben laughed so hard he snorted. Traitor. “Welcome to small-town life. Where your business is everyone’s business, and resistance is futile.”
The pipe cleaner ring sat in my palm, already shedding glitter onto my jeans.
Olivia beamed up at me with complete faith that I would treasure her creation.
Mrs. Sage was flipping through bridal magazines with poorly concealed glee.
Lily looked like she wanted to crawl under the counter and hide until spring.
And somehow, despite the chaos and the gossip and the two hundred people apparently planning our proposal, all I could think about was how Lily’s hair caught the light from the window, and how Olivia’s smile was exactly like her mother’s, and how this ridiculous, invasive, overwhelming place had started to feel like home.
I carefully tucked the pipe cleaner ring into my pocket.
“For safekeeping,” I told Olivia, who squealed and hugged me around the waist.
Lily’s eyes met mine over her daughter’s head, and something passed between us—panic, definitely, but also something softer. A recognition that we were in this together, whatever “this” was.
“The Harvest Gala’s next week,” she said quietly.
“I know.”
“They’re all expecting...”
“I know.”
“What do we do?”
I looked at the pipe cleaner ring already coating my pocket with glitter, at Olivia still attached to my waist, at Mrs. Sage “subtly” showing Ben a magazine page featuring winter weddings, at the text from my mother now asking about baptism preferences for future grandchildren.
“We get through the gala,” I said. “Together. Everything else... We’ll figure it out.”
“That’s not much of a plan.”
“Do you have a better one?”
She laughed, but it was shaky. “Apparently June’s Facebook group has several.”
“With color-coded spreadsheets,” Olivia added helpfully. “And a Pinterest board. It’s very thorough.”
I pulled out my phone to find seventeen new notifications from various townspeople offering proposal assistance, venue suggestions, and someone named Roger volunteering his brother’s mariachi band.
“We don’t need a mariachi band,” I said to no one in particular.
“Obviously,” Mrs. Sage said, not looking up from her magazine. “This is a fall wedding. Acoustic guitar or string quartet only.”
“There’s no wedding!” Lily and I protested together.
But even as we said it, I could feel that pipe cleaner ring in my pocket, ridiculous and perfect and impossibly right, and I wondered if maybe the town knew something we didn’t.
Or maybe they just knew something we weren’t ready to admit.
Either way, I had a week to figure it out.
A week, and two hundred enthusiastic conspirators who’d probably already picked out our china pattern.
“ Dio ci aiuti, ” I muttered under my breath.
God help us all.