Wish You Were Gone(64)
Emma glanced at Gray. She felt for the girl. Was that ridiculous? She seemed genuine. And six years ago? James would have been almost forty, and her boss. The predatory nature of the situation made her intestines twist.
“Look, I know you don’t know me, but I hope you can forgive me,” Jenny said. “And I really am sorry for your family’s loss.”
Without another word, she turned and walked back to her husband at the bar, lacing her fingers through his. Lizzie appeared seconds later, looking pale and a bit unsteady.
“Well, Janet McElroy is out. Not that she can’t be bisexual, but she’s over there with her girlfriend and I got a very anti-patriarchy vibe.”
Emma reached for Lizzie’s hand and squeezed it. “It was Jenny Mahone.”
She wouldn’t have thought it possible for Lizzie to lose any more color, but she went almost translucent. “No. Really?”
“Yes, but it happened six years ago when she was single and practically a baby herself.” Gray’s expression was grim. “She’s married with kids now.”
Lizzie covered her mouth with one hand. “So it’s a pattern. It’s more than one.”
“Sorry. I don’t follow,” Gray said. “We found JM. Done deal.”
“No. Not a done deal,” Emma said, wondering how she was supposed to make it through the rest of the night. “If they ended it six years ago, then it wasn’t Jenny who had James’s phone. It was someone else.”
KELSEY
A fork clanged against a champagne glass. Another someone wanted to make a speech about her father. At weddings, clinking a champagne glass with your fork meant the couple had to kiss. At this particular event it meant that someone Kelsey didn’t know was going to make another speech about what an amazing person her father was. How he was so funny and big-hearted and charming. How thoughtful he could be. How kind. Remember that time he lost five golf balls during one round with Tiger Woods and laughed it off? So laid back. Or when he called my daughter once a week for three months after she had her appendix out, just to check if she was okay? The compassion. The empathy.
Kelsey had her appendix out when she was twelve. Her father hadn’t even come to the hospital.
“You want to burn this place to the ground, don’t you?” Willow asked, sidling up next to Kelsey with a glass of champagne. She had a way of doing that—silently appearing with no warning. She was wearing a sparkly bracelet that Kelsey was sure didn’t belong to her. One of these fancy women was going to go to remove her jewelry later tonight and discover it missing. Kelsey would have bet money on it.
“You’re drinking?”
“What’re you, a nun?” Willow slurped from the glass. “Want me to get you one?”
“Um, no thanks.” Kelsey was feeling punchy. In fact, she did sort of want to burn the place to the ground, but she’d never admit to Willow that she was right.
“What the hell did I do to piss you off so much?” Willow asked under her breath. “The whole eBay thing was your idea, remember? Forgive me if I don’t want to give it up now that we’re making bank.”
Kelsey grit her teeth. This was so not the time. So not the place. And also, Willow was right. It was her idea. But she’d changed her mind. She wished things could just go back to the way they’d been before her dad died. But she wished they could go back to the way they’d been and still have him be gone. Why couldn’t he just have left them, like other asshole fathers did? Why couldn’t he and her mom have just gotten a divorce?
“And I was going to give the ring back. I swear I was.”
Kelsey’s head was beginning to pound. “Will you please just leave me alone?” she blurted, loudly enough that a few people around them turned to stare. Willow’s pale face flushed with heat. She looked, suddenly, murderous. Kelsey turned her back on her. Returned her attention to the speeches.
It simply made no sense. The gushing, effusive, borderline manic things these strangers had to say about James Walsh. Everyone really did love this person. To these people he was a fine specimen of a human being. Vaunted. Revered. Beloved. It seemed he saved the raving psycho side of himself for his family. Home was the place you could be who you really were, after all.
As this new speech began, Kelsey zoned out. Her mother was no longer at her station in front of the ridiculously large Obama poster, which was good, because most of the night she’d looked like a marble statue of herself—her expression grim and focused, blue veins showing through her skin under the unflattering light. Maybe her mother had bailed. Kelsey would be pissed about being deserted, but she’d totally understand.
There was a polite smattering of applause when this last speaker was through, and then Darnell stepped up to the microphone.
“Thank you, Stacey, for sharing that lovely memory,” he said, his voice low and lulling through the speakers. “Now, Hunter Walsh, James’s son, would like to say a few words on behalf of the family.”
People around the room whispered and murmured, anticipating her superstar brother, the apple of his father’s eye, taking the microphone. There wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house once this was over. Everyone glanced around, over their shoulders, on their toes, but Hunter didn’t materialize. Kelsey looked at the corner of the room where he’d been hanging out with his friends all night, sneaking drinks and laughing inappropriately.