“She is?” Danny asked. “Since when?”
“Since four months ago. We talked about this.”
“Oh, right. Sure.”
“I hope it’s helpful,” Brooke said, handing her phone to Linnie.
“Thank you,” my sister said, sounding grateful, and much calmer. “I really appreciate it. Mom, can you help?”
Feeling like this crisis had been resolved for the moment, I started to put my phone in my pocket just when it buzzed with a text—from Jesse.
Jesse
Hey. So great to see you today.
Thinking about you.
I stared at the words he’d written, trying to keep a smile off my face, my heart pounding. I quickly walked over to the front hall, feeling like I needed some privacy as I wrote back.
Me
Me too
Maybe I can see you soon?
A second later, Jesse replied.
Jesse
You know it.
I smiled and continued walking, wondering if I should reply to this—like ask him for specifics—but stopped short when I realized I was walking in on a conversation between Rodney and his aunt Liz. I’d met her just before we’d all been hustled into the family room. She really resembled Rodney’s mom, and had seemed very sweet, chatting with Linnie about wedding plans.
“What do you mean your uncle is coming?” Aunt Liz snapped, and I realized the nice older lady that I’d met was gone. This Aunt Liz was glowering and steely-eyed and looked pissed.
“Well,” Rodney said, glancing around nervously, like he was hoping someone would come and help him. “We invited both of you to the wedding, of course. But you’re sitting far away from each other, and . . .”
Sorry, I mouthed to Rodney as I started to back away, realizing this must have been the family feud he’d mentioned earlier. I pulled open the front door, thinking that if I needed privacy, outside might be one of the few places I could get it—only to see Rodney’s parents, General and Mrs. Daniels, heading up the walk.
“Um. Rodney?” I smiled at the Danielses and waved to them. “Your parents are here.”
Mrs. Daniels waved back at me, and the General nodded as they reached the front door. I’d only met Rodney’s family a few times—his older brother and sister had both followed their parents into the military. His sister was in the JAG Corps, and his brother was in the air force, stationed in Japan, which meant he had to miss the wedding. Even if you didn’t know Rodney’s dad was a three-star general, you’d get it from just a few minutes in his presence. I somehow always found myself standing up much straighter when I was around him.
“Charlotte,” he said, crossing the threshold into the house and giving me a quick, firm handshake. The General shook everyone’s hand—if he was feeling particularly emotional, he might give you a pat on the shoulder as well.
“Hello, dear,” Mrs. Daniels said, giving me a quick cheek kiss and then patting my hair and straightening the sleeves of my sweater.
I smiled at her automatically. “Can I help with your bags? How was your flight?”
“I’m perfectly capable of handling the luggage, though I appreciate the offer to assist,” the General said. “And we had a bit of turbulence as we crossed the Great Plains. It lasted, what, twenty minutes, Rose?”
“About that,” she replied, nodding. I shut the door behind them as they greeted their son with a handshake and a hug, respectively.
“Liz!” Rodney’s mother said, smiling at her sister and going to hug her, but Liz just pointed at Rodney.
“Did you know about this?” she asked. “About Jimmy being welcomed to this wedding?”
“Well, here’s the thing,” Mrs. Daniels started.
“If everyone could please reset,” Jill yelled from the family room. “We need to get this wrapped up.”
“What’s going on?” the General asked.
“Good Morning America,” I said. “It’s just a rehearsal.” Mrs. Daniels looked more confused than ever, and I took a breath to explain just as my phone rang.
I pulled it out of my pocket and saw that it was Bill. I slid my finger over to answer immediately, realizing a bit too late that I never had checked in on him and asked how things were going at the Inn. But maybe he was just calling to tell me that everything was fine, that everything had been sorted out, and that there were no problems whatsoever. “Hi, Bill,” I said, taking a few steps away from the Danielses.
“Hey, Charlie,” Bill said, sounding slightly out of breath and stressed enough that my hopes that things were okay were immediately dashed. “Um . . . can you come help? There’s . . . a little bit of a situation.”
CHAPTER 10
Or, You Better Run, You Better Take Cover
* * *
YOU’RE WRONG,” I SAID TO Bill.
“I don’t think I am.”
“It shouldn’t go there.”
“Says who?”
“Says me. That’s absolutely the wrong place for a koala.” I said this with a great deal of confidence, like I was somehow an expert in marsupial placement. But honestly, in the last twenty minutes, I felt like I’d become one.
We were in the party room of Indoor Xtreme, the extreme sports place that had opened when I was in middle school. For a while in sixth grade, it was the place to have your birthday party—there was a paintball course and a skate ramp and rock climbing. The party room was where the pizza-and-cake portion of all the birthdays I’d attended here had been held, and apparently in the last few years, this hadn’t changed—because this, Bill had found out, was the spot where Clay was going to be having his ninth birthday.
As soon as we’d wrapped up with GMA, I’d driven over to Indoor Xtreme. And even though Bill had prepared me, I didn’t quite get it until I stepped into the party room and saw just how fully Clementine had messed up. In the neon orange and green room, with phrases like “Xtreme Attitude” spray-painted on the walls, were Linnie and Rodney’s decorations. There were blown-up photos of the two of them through the years, delicate peach and gray streamers, and an oversize card where people could write well-wishes to the couple. The decorations could not have looked more out of place with their setting, and we’d taken them down as quickly as possible. We’d been about to leave when the girl who seemed to be in charge of things told us, without looking up once from her phone, that we were welcome to leave Clay’s decorations behind, but that Indoor Xtreme had a one-setup-per-party policy, so decorations for the birthday party Bill had brought from the Inn were just going to remain in the pile where he had left them.
And even though this was entirely Clementine’s fault, it felt wrong to leave this Clay kid with his birthday decorations in a heap. So Bill and I had started decorating the party room for him and hadn’t gotten very far before we’d had a serious disagreement about antipodean animal placement.
“I think he looks good,” Bill said, straightening the cardboard koala cutout that he’d placed near the door. “He’s welcoming everyone inside.”
I shook my head. “He’s going to get crushed. There’s going to be a stampede for the pizza and soda and he’ll be the first casualty. Trust me.”
Bill smiled at me and took a step back. “Are you sure this isn’t just the wallaby fight all over again?”
“I was right about that,” I said as I picked up the koala and moved him so that he was presiding over the gift bags, which we’d arranged in neat rows. “Nobody’s going to get that but you.” Bill had insisted on taping the wallabies over the door so that people would see them as they left. “It’s a walla-bye,” he kept repeating. “Get it?”
“Didn’t you ever go to a birthday party here?” I asked, changing the angle of the koala. “I would have thought you’d be familiar with the pizza stampede.”
Bill smiled but shook his head. “There’s was a place kind of like this in Putnam when I was a kid, so we kept it local.”
“And you said you lived in Albuquerque too, right?”
Bill raised an eyebrow at me. “Good memory.”