Hell on Heels(18)

“Now, which one of you girls wants to lose a game of three-handed whist?” Dad clapped his hands together and rubbed them eagerly.

I laughed, and Mom did too.

Dad, as well as fishing, was also terrible at cards, unless it was crib. It drove him crazy the way Mom could tell how he sorted the cards in his hand from across the table.

Their marriage had been through hell and back again, but they were still in love and were still a team, even if mom did beat him most of the time.

And she did beat him at almost everything.




“Bye, sweetheart.” Mom waved from under the porch light, tucked against my dad’s side. “Drive safely.”

“I will!” I hollered through the open window and over the sound of my engine.

Dad waved too. “Call us when you get home.”

My parents were the kind of people that cared if you got home safe, and those were the best kind of people.

“I will!” I shouted again, before pulling out of their driveway.

The clock on my microwave told me it was a little after eight in the evening when I got home. I was quick about going through my evening routine. I showered and slathered myself in lotion before collapsing in a heap on the sofa with my laptop in hand.

Powering it on, I noticed an email from Kevin’s work account with two attachments.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Photos

Event photographer forwarded some of the promotional images from the gala. I put these in your personal folder.

xx

I clicked on the first attachment and a landscape photo opened onto the screen. It was of Beau and me at the end of the night. The photographer had zoomed in. Beau was bent at the waist, his lips on the top of my hand, and I was smiling.

It looked like a movie still.

Dragging it to the left, I saved the image to my desktop.

I closed down the photo and clicked on the second attachment. This picture was portrait and looked like it had been taken from the stage looking over the dance floor. The couple in the center eclipsed the shot. It was intimate in a way that made you unable to look away. The woman’s head was tucked into the man’s neck, the angle covering most of his face, and his hands splayed across the open back of her dress. That’s when I realized the woman was me. I was dancing in the arms of the masked man.

My mouse hovered over the delete key as I stared at it.

Then I dragged the image to the left and saved it to my desktop.

I shut the laptop, pushing it down the couch, and pulled a blanket from the floor.

Spending time with my parents was always a highlight for me. Except on this day, with visiting Henry and the gala the night prior, I was feeling more emotions than I could manage, which meant there was only one emotion that would require the surrender of others.

Fear.

It took a minute to find the remote, and when I did, it took another five to scroll through the horror selection on Netflix until I settled on an old favourite, Scream.

The year that movie was released, I spent a month sleeping with a knife beside my bed and, of course, that Halloween, Henry went as the Scream killer.

Gore was my failsafe.

When I felt scared, I didn’t have to feel anything else. Fear was an all-consuming emotion.

“What’s your favourite scary movie?”

I pulled the quilt up to my chin and let fear devour me whole.





A Few Weeks Later…



“I’m thinking Grecian with new age flare,” Emma announced, her short black hair falling into her face as she dropped concept boards onto my desk.

Tina was right behind her. “We would do all white flower arrangements with spray-painted gold roses as the pop.”

My desk was now joined by a small arrangement that showcased her point.

The gold did pop.

Tina’s arrangements always required the pop.

“White lights in every tree.” Kevin made twinkly motions with his hands as he leaned a graceful hip against my desk.

Tom hovered in the doorway liked they’d no doubt dragged him there, but he offered his two cents anyway. “We’d do a floating stage just inside the lake with land access and spotlight it from all sides. I could rig the speakers in a semi-circle arrangement, which would allow the sound to carry throughout the garden.”

To say the team was enthusiastic about our venue for the 2017 Halo Foundation Gala would have been putting it mildly. With a last minute cancellation at the VanDusen Botanical Gardens, it would be the first ever year the event would be held in the full swing of summer, on August fourth of next year.

“And these…” Emma tapped one of the concept boards demandingly despite her tiny frame. I followed her eyesight and raised my eyebrows.

“Chinese lanterns for a Grecian theme?” I looked at my team, unsure.

Emma shook her head wildly. “No, no.”

“Picture this,” Kevin chimed in. “You give your speech, and as you finish, every guest in attendance releases one of the white lanterns.”

“The sky would be dazzling.” Emma sighed, her eyes dreamy.

Looking over their heads, I eyed Tom. “Is that safe? Are we going to have a problem with a fire hazard?”

He shook his head. “Shouldn’t be a problem. I can run specs with the city inspector when I see him next week regarding the Rickshaw wedding.”