Once and for All(62)

“It was fine,” I told her, as Ambrose came back in with the coffees, then hummed his way past me, giving me a jaunty salute with his free hand. I tried not to grimace, probably failed. “I’ll fill you in later.”

“Do that. Or call if you do get a break. I’m in the car or the truck until at least five. Have a great day!”

“Okay,” I said, not even trying to match her enthusiasm. I put down my phone, then picked up another card, folding it and adding it to the stack. As I reached for another one, a book suddenly dropped onto the table beside me. A slim paperback, the cover featured a line drawing of a field, one crow flying overhead. HARVEST, it said on the cover. I looked at Ambrose, who was taking his seat beside me. “What’s this?”

“A loan from Leo,” he replied, starting in on his own stack of cards. “He said to take your time with it.”

I pulled the book over, flipping it open. A NOVEL BY MCCALLUM MCCLATCHY, said the title page. I turned another page, which had passages highlighted, notes scribbled in the margins, and read the first line.

In a world, in a field, a plow sits. Harvest has come.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” I said out loud, pushing it aside.

Ambrose glanced at me. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said, a bit too forcefully. “I just want . . . to work.”

“Sure.” He folded another card. “Let’s work.”

A moment later, he started humming again.




“Candles,” William said, handing me the long plastic lighter. “Don’t forget the ones by the gazebo.”

I nodded, then walked over to the nearest table, set with thick linens and gold-rimmed china, a huge collection of white lilies at its center. As I bent over the three pillar candles arranged just so around the place settings, I breathed in their fragrant smell, hoping it might improve my mood. It couldn’t hurt.

So the week hadn’t been great. At least it was busy, with the details for this weekend’s Elinor Lin rehearsal dinner and wedding distracting me from Ambrose’s cheerful mood and Jilly’s own epic night, which I’d heard all about in the days since. Michael Salem (he was indeed always referred to by this double moniker) had just graduated from the Fountain School, skateboarded in competitions, had four siblings, too, just like her! She’d showed me a picture, of him leaning out of the GRAVY Truck, smiling, a dour-looking Crawford reflected in his big, white-framed sunglasses. He was cute, and, yes, not her type at all. You just never knew, I guess.

I moved on to the next table, lighting the candles there. Behind me, distantly, I could hear my mom talking with Elinor Lin’s mother, who had proven to be the biggest wrinkle in the fabric of this weekend’s events. Mothers of the bride were always a factor: they had Emotions and Opinions and were often enlisted to convey certain messages or directives the bride was too timid to deliver herself. Elinor Lin didn’t need anyone to speak for her, though: she was smart, assertive, and knew exactly what she wanted. I’d thought she was tough until I met Mrs. Lin, who was all of these things but louder, bossier, and ready to spar at any second about whatever didn’t suit her. In another world, she and my mom might have been friends, purely out of their similarities. In this one, though, they were anything but.

“People will need direction as they come in,” Mrs. Lin was saying as she dabbed her face with a Kleenex, of which she kept an impressive supply in the bodice of whatever she was wearing. The first time I’d noticed her yanking out a tissue from this area, it had startled me, but now it was all I could do not to reach over and do the same when the pollen count got high. You got to know people in weird ways at weddings. “And it’s rude to not have someone there to greet them.”

“Elinor felt,” my mom replied, using the two word prefix she always utilized with Mrs. Lin in these conversations, “that having the table assignments in the gazebo as guests entered would be enough.”

“Well, I don’t. So put someone there.”

With that, she walked away. I risked a glance at my mom, who was watching her go, face calm but eyes narrowed. There really was no counterargument to a person telling you that you are wrong and then what to do, even if you were Natalie Barrett, and I felt a rush of protectiveness toward her. When she glanced at me, though, I quickly went back to the candles.

Just as I lit the wick of a round candle in a glass votive, someone leaned over me and blew it out. Annoyed, I glanced up. Ambrose.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I just can’t light a candle without making a wish and blowing it out. It’s some kind of birthday neurosis.”

I looked at the plastic lighter in his hand. “Then you definitely should not be doing this particular job.”

“It’s okay,” he assured me. “I’m just lighting them, wishing and blowing, then lighting them again.”

Granted, it had been a long day. Just about anything had the potential to cross the line of Just Too Damn Much. But there was something about this that shot me over it. “Are you serious?” I demanded.

“What?”

“That is the stupidest, most waste-of-time thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Ouch.” He raised his eyebrows. “Are you mad at me about something?”

“It’s not professional! Making wishes, lighting candles twice. You’re here representing our company. You need to act like it.”