“Yeah, well,” Don muttered, glaring at my father. He glanced toward the backyard one more time, then shook his head. “Just keep it down and we won’t have a problem.”
“Charlie,” my dad said, giving me a look that clearly told me whatever would follow wouldn’t exactly be a suggestion, “why don’t you show Don out? Through the front door.”
“Sure thing,” I said, quickly crossing to the front door and motioning for Don to follow, as my dad stalked away. “Hey, have you been having problems getting the Sentinel?” I asked as I pulled the door open for him. “The papergirl hasn’t been delivering to us.”
Don scoffed. “I don’t read the Sentinel,” he said, heading down the front steps. “I subscribe to actual newspapers.”
“Hey, hey, Maddie.” I turned to see J.J. passing through the front hall, his phone to his ear. “Yeah, I know it’s been a while. But isn’t it good to hear from me? Wait, not even a little?”
I shut the door, then headed into the kitchen. Linnie, Rodney, Will, and Bill were clustered around the center island. I could see that Will was wearing the same green fleece as Bill, except that under WHERE THERE’S A WILL was written WILL, which seemed to me to be a few too many Wills for one piece of clothing.
“Well, if you’d told me it was your birthday, I wouldn’t have broken up with you!” J.J. said, following me into the kitchen. “Maddie? Hello?”
“Date search going well?” Linnie asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
“This is just like the ’86 Mets.” J.J. had a habit of bringing everything back to baseball; as far as he was concerned, there was a baseball analogy for every situation in life.
“Is it, though?” Rodney asked.
“Everyone counted them out too. But then—”
“Okay,” Will said, in a voice that wasn’t particularly loud, but was authoritative enough that we all quieted down. “I’ve made a list of the vendors Clementine was working with, and I’ve gotten in contact with all of them, so they know not to reach out to her. I’m still trying to reach Party in the Stars. . . .”
“What’s that?” J.J. asked.
Will shot him a look that made it clear he didn’t appreciate the interruption. “Wedding band.”
I could have told J.J. that. I’d heard a lot about Party in the Stars in the run-up to the wedding. Linnie and Rodney had seen them at one of their friends’ weddings and they had been their first choice, even though my parents had told them a DJ would require a lot less equipment and wouldn’t need a stage.
“Moving on,” Will said. “The tent should be up later this afternoon, and once it’s up, we’ll get the electrical and the furniture—” There was loud buzzing sound. Will stopped and pulled his cell phone out of his belt holder. “Will Barnes.” He listened for a moment, his brow furrowing. “I see. And you just found this out now?” He listened again, his expression growing more annoyed. “I’ll send someone to help out. They should be there in twenty. You too.”
He hung up, and I saw that during this conversation, my sister had silently been getting more and more stressed—I could see the vein in her temple, the one that I used to tease her about endlessly, starting to show. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s a small problem at the Inn,” he said, referring to where the rehearsal dinner was taking place tonight. “Something about the decorations. I’d go myself, but I need to supervise the tent guys—”
“I knew this would happen,” Linnie said, her voice getting shakier and higher with every word. “Our wedding planner disappears, and then everything starts—”
“I’ll go!” I jumped in. “I can get it sorted out.”
Will nodded. “Sounds good. Bill, you go as well, okay? And report back.”
“Sure,” Bill said, nodding. Then he looked at me. “If it’s okay with you.”
“Of course,” I said. I gave Linnie what I hoped was a confident I’ve got this look. “I’m sure it’s not anything big. But whatever it is, we’ll handle it.”
“Thanks, Charlie.”
I grabbed my keys off the hook by the door and raised my eyebrows at Bill. “Let’s go.”
* * *
It was a twenty-minute drive from our house to the Inn, and for the first fifteen, either Bill or I had been on the phone. Bill was fielding texts and calls pretty much nonstop—apparently, they’d had to move some things around to take on Linnie’s wedding at the last minute, so he was having to reschedule appointments. And Siobhan had called me, wanting to know what the text I’d sent her—Your fruit name theory was right—meant. We’d had a quick talk, but since I was driving, the call was over the car speakers, and I was all too aware that it wasn’t just me listening. It wasn’t until we were nearly there that Bill set down his phone, looked across the car, and smiled at me.
I smiled back, and in the quiet that fell between us for the first time this whole ride, I suddenly realized that I was in a small enclosed space with a guy I didn’t know—like, at all.
“So,” I said, figuring that I could just treat Bill like he was the subject of a profile I was writing and get the basics of his background. The Wedding Planner’s Nephew, it could be called, even if it kind of sounded like a bad romantic comedy. I was just going to cross off the “who” of the all-important five Ws—who, what, where, when, why—that all journalists used. These words were painted three feet high in a mural in the Stanwich High newsroom. “Do you like working in event planning?”
Bill looked over at me with a smile, and I was starting to realize that this was his default expression—it was like he had resting cheerful face. “I do,” he said. “It’s always something different, at any rate. I worked for Where There’s A Will all through high school, and I didn’t have any exciting spring break plans, so when my uncle offered to fly me out if I would help him this week, I said sure.”
I nodded. This had always been my favorite part of the work at the newspaper—talking to people, putting their story together, knowing when to jump in and when to hang back and nod and hope they’d tell you more. Maybe it came from being the youngest and having to listen and observe, but for whatever reason, it had always come easily to me. “Where are you on spring break from?”
“University of Chicago. In . . . Chicago,” he added, then laughed. “I guess that’s pretty self-explanatory. I’m finishing up my first year.”
I took a breath, about to mention my Northwestern acceptance, but stopped myself before I spoke. I wasn’t going to Northwestern, and there didn’t seem to be much point in talking about where you weren’t going to college. “Did you go to Stanwich?” I asked instead, even though I was pretty sure the answer was no. Stanwich High was a huge school, but most of the people there were at least vaguely familiar. And Siobhan and I had made it our mission to know who the cute guys were. And while Bill was no Jesse Foster, he was someone we definitely would have noticed.
He shook his head. “I’m from Putnam,” he said, naming the town one over from Stanwich. “And . . . sometimes Albuquerque.”
I glanced over at him, surprised, but before I could ask a follow-up, I saw the sign for the Inn and signaled to turn down the long and winding driveway that led to the main building.
“I think I’ve been here before,” Bill said, squinting as he leaned forward. “I can’t remember what for, though. Maybe someone’s sweet sixteen?”
I nodded. “Sounds about right.” The Inn was where I had attended lots of various functions over the years—weddings, receptions, birthday parties, the bar and bat mitzvahs that seemed to take up every weekend of my seventh-grade social calendar, and even junior prom last year when a pipe burst at the school and we couldn’t hold it on campus. It was an old mansion with a carriage house that had been converted to a hotel, with guest rooms upstairs and a restaurant and ballroom downstairs. I pulled into one of the empty parking spots out front and killed the engine, getting out of the car at the same time as Bill.