“You’re new,” my dad said, frowning at Bill and then taking his glasses off his head, putting them on, and squinting at him. He turned to my mom for reassurance. “Eleanor? Not one of ours, is he?”
“I’m Bill Barnes,” Bill said. “Um—I work with my uncle Will Barnes at his event planning business, Where There’s A Will. Pland contacted us last night and asked us to step in because they’d had some . . . um . . . issues with Clementine Lucas?”
“What?” Linnie asked, and it looked like she’d gone about three shades paler. “What do you mean issues?”
Bill cleared his throat and looked around, like he was waiting for someone else to take charge, and I remembered what he’d said about expecting his uncle to be here already. “Um. So apparently she has been mixing up clients’ events, not responding to e-mails, embezzlement . . . not booking venues . . .”
“I’m sorry?” Linnie asked, staring at him. “Did you say embezzlement?”
“Has she been arrested or something?” my mother asked, standing up from the table and walking over to my sister, who looked like she was about to fall over.
“Um. Well,” Bill said, clearing his throat. “Pland didn’t tell me that, but apparently she’s stopped making contact with them or with any of her clients, so their working assumption is that she has skipped town.”
“No,” Linnie said, pulling out her phone. “There must be some misunderstanding, because she just e-mailed me last night. . . .” She scrolled through it, then held it to me. “See?” I squinted down at the screen. The e-mail was one sentence long, with no subject line. It just read EVERYTHING IS FINE!!!
“I don’t know,” I said, looking at my sister. “This actually seems like kind of a bad sign.”
“Huh,” Linnie said, staring at her phone. “I guess I just thought she was being reassuring.”
“So what happens now?” my dad asked, crossing his arms over his chest. His voice, I noticed, had dropped into his frighten the underclassmen timbre. “You do realize my daughter is getting married tomorrow?”
Linnie, who’d started typing frantically on her phone, let out a sound that was halfway between a sob and a slightly hysterical laugh.
“We’re aware,” Bill said quickly. “Pland is deeply upset about this and has hired us to take over on Clementine’s behalf. You’ll have your fee completely refunded.”
“I don’t care about that,” Linnie said, her voice going high and panicky. “I realize this isn’t your fault, but my wedding is tomorrow. And that’s pretty late to be getting a new wedding coordinator.”
“I completely understand,” Bill said. He took a step farther into the room, set down his coffee on the kitchen island, and flipped open his binder. “And my uncle can certainly speak to this in more detail than me—he should be along at any moment. But he drew up a plan last night, and I think—”
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. The alarm went off again, much louder down here than it had been up in my room.
“Aaaaagh!” My future brother-in-law had just entered, jumped at the sound, and fumbled the pink bakery box he’d been holding, sending it crashing to the floor.
“My bear claw!” my dad cried, running over to the donut box.
“Why is this happening again?” Linnie yelled, covering her ears.
“It’s fine,” I yelled as I hurried to the panel. “What’s the code?”
“Twelve thirty-four,” my mom yelled, and I punched it in. It took a second, but then the alarm shut off, and Linnie cautiously moved her hands away from her head.
“It’s off,” I assured her.
“The donuts are okay,” my dad said, sounding incredibly relieved as he stood up with the box.
“What,” Rodney asked, looking at the alarm panel, “is going on with that? Twice in one morning?”
“Three times,” I said, taking a step back from the panel slowly, like I might set it off again. I turned to Rodney. “Did you get me a strawberry glazed?”
Rodney adjusted his glasses, which had gone a little askew. “Of course I did. I didn’t just get here.” Linnie had met Rodney Daniels on their first day of Dartmouth. He was one of the very first people she’d encountered in the school—he’d been wandering the halls alone, clutching his laundry hamper and shower caddy, trying to find his room. They’d met again that night at a new-student mixer, and they’d been together ever since—except for the five months they’d broken up when they were twenty-three. But even at twelve, I’d known that their split wasn’t going to last long. Linnie and Rodney just belonged together. They were incredibly similar, well matched from the very beginning, even though Linnie was white and had lived in the same house in Connecticut practically her whole life and Rodney was black and an army brat, and had grown up on bases all over the world.
Rodney’s dad, an air force general, and his mom, an army nurse, had eventually settled on a base in Hawaii, where he’d spent high school. Because getting from New Hampshire to Honolulu and back again was time-consuming and really expensive, Rodney had spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with us all four years of college. When I’d had a meeting with my guidance counselor last week, she’d asked me how I felt about adding a new member to the family. And it had honestly taken me a minute to work out what she was asking me, because Rodney had already been a member of my family, for the last ten years.
“I got your text,” Rodney said as he crossed over to my sister, slinging an arm around her shoulders and kissing the top of her head—at six two, he was nearly a head taller than Linnie. He tended to keep his head shaved and had been dressing pretty much the same way since he was eighteen—in jeans and a crisply pressed button-down. My parents frequently pointed to Rodney as an example when they were trying to get my brothers to dress more like adults and less like middle schoolers with credit cards. “I didn’t—quite understand it.”
“What do you mean?”
Rodney pulled out his phone and squinted down at it. “Where are you? You need to get here. Ducking Clementine is gone and I’m about to ducking lose it. DUCK.”
“Stupid autocorrect,” Linnie muttered, shaking her head.
“Clementine quit?”
“She didn’t even have the decency to quit! She just embezzled a bunch of money and disappeared!”
“What?”
“Hi, I’m Bill,” Bill said cheerfully, not reading the room very well as he smiled and held out a hand to Rodney. “Where There’s A Will.”
“Uh . . . sure, man,” Rodney said, shaking his hand. “Good attitude.”
“Bill and his uncle are taking over for Clementine,” I explained. “So they’re going to handle everything.” I said this with more confidence than I felt as I crossed over to the donut box, nudged my father out of the way, and picked up my strawberry glazed.
“Where’s your suit?” Linnie asked Rodney. “Weren’t you going to get it along with the donuts?”
Rodney winced. “It wasn’t ready yet. They said I can pick it up first thing tomorrow.”
“But tomorrow’s the wedding,” Linnie said, her voice going wobbly, like she was on the verge of bursting into tears. Everyone in the kitchen who wasn’t Linnie exchanged a quick, panicked glance. It was like we all were thinking the same thing—don’t let the bride cry.
“I can go get it,” I said immediately. I grabbed Linnie’s favorite donut—chocolate with sprinkles—and put it on a plate for her. It seemed like she could maybe use some carbs right about now. “I’ll go out and get it tomorrow morning. You don’t need to worry about it. Consider it taken care of.”
“But . . . ,” Linnie said, looking around.
“And I’ll go call the alarm company, how about that?” my dad asked, his voice soothing. “So we can make sure it doesn’t go off again.”
“And I’m sure Bill and his uncle are going to have everything handled,” my mom said while looking right at Bill.