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“I’m just the man for it,” Zack replied cheerfully. “I will see you later, Lucy.”
With that promise, Zack strode up the aisle and took his seat next to Tate, who looked relieved that at least one brother had arrived.
Lucy took a seat near the back. She wasn’t family, and she wasn’t sure she could really call herself a friend of the Winslows. She’d gone to school with a few of them, and she had chatted with Kim on occasion. But she couldn’t remember a time when she’d spoken to Joel Winslow. Her parents, Gail and Stuart, had though, and she turned to crane her neck to see if her parents had shown up yet. Her father, bless him, hadn’t been feeling a hundred percent this morning with a nasty headache, but in the end, they’d decided to come.
She gave them a wave when she saw them, and they smiled back, making a beeline for the seats she’d saved them.
“I was worried we would miss it,” her mother Gail said. “We had to park way down the street, and I’m wearing heels.”
The music started and everyone hurried into their seats as Joel Winslow and his brother Rick took their places at the front with the officiant. A lone bridesmaid walked down the aisle followed by a little flower girl that looked familiar. Lucy was sure she’d seen her in the bookstore at some point.
A slow crescendo had all heads turning as Kim appeared at the end of the aisle, wearing an off-the-shoulder white silk dress with a beaded bodice. She was holding a bouquet of pink roses and wearing a happy smile. It was hard to be cynical about this couple when the bride looked so gosh-darn thrilled to be getting married.
Lucy stole a glance at Zack who was sitting at the front, and he’d turned to see his aunt only briefly. Her heart ached, knowing that this had to be so hard for him and his siblings. They were watching their father marry their aunt while not knowing what had happened to their mother. It was a little Jerry Springer, to be honest, but she had to give Joel and Kim props. They didn’t care what had transpired in the last twenty-four hours. They were going to have their blowout wedding and everyone else be damned.
The ceremony didn’t take long, and soon they were all in the reception hall sipping cool, bubbly French champagne and eating gourmet hors d’eouvres carried on silver trays by impeccably dressed passing waiters.
A string quartet played quietly in the corner, and the town hobnobbed while the happy couple had their picture taken by a photographer who kept shouting instructions, looking harassed and tense.
“He’s staring at you.”
Her mother had leaned in to whisper in Lucy’s ear.
“Who?”
Her mother nodded to the left where Zack was talking with his uncle Rick and his wife Elaine.
“Zachary Winslow. He’s staring at you. Whatever the conversation is, he’s not listening at all.”
Lucy turned to look and their gazes collided, causing heat to creep into her cheeks. He lifted his glass in a toasting motion, a playful smile on his lips. His aunt and uncle noticed the behavior and were looking at Lucy oddly, probably wondering what was going on.
“I promised him a dance.”
It sounded awkward because it was awkward. She hadn’t told her parents that she and Zack had met up, mostly because she was an adult, and she didn’t tell her parents every detail of her life anymore. She had her own place, and she paid her own bills. They only knew what she told them, or what they learned through gossip. Not that Lucy led a life interesting enough for people to talk about it.
And I’m just fine with that.
“Really? A dance? That’s…interesting.”
“It’s not interesting at all,” her father said with a laugh. “Leave her alone, Gail. Nothing good will come from sticking our noses into Lucy’s business.”
Stuart had always been good about respecting Lucy’s privacy. Her mother wasn’t terrible, but she wanted the details far too often. Lucy simply wasn’t going to talk about her love life with her mother. It never turned out well.
“She’s our daughter—”
“Who is all grown up.”
Unexpectedly, Gail’s eyes began to glitter with tears, and she rummaged in her purse for a tissue.
“I’m so grateful we got to see you grow up. I keep thinking about Sarah and her poor parents. How devastated her mother was when she disappeared, and now that she’s been found. It must be like losing her all over again. You two were friends, weren’t you?”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Lucy said, patting her mother on the shoulder. “It is sad, isn’t it? I knew Sarah and we were in the same friend group, but I wouldn’t call us close friends. We weren’t sharing secrets or anything, but we were around each other a lot.”
“What if Sarah was just in the wrong place at the wrong time?” Gail sniffled. “What if you had been there instead of her? We could have lost you. This is all so disturbing. The sheriff needs to find out what happened to that poor girl. I’ve been reading about human trafficking in the news. Maybe that’s what happened to her.”
“I think when they do that, they take them away from their hometown, sweetheart,” her father explained gently. “It might have just been a terrible accident. They haven’t said anything yet about how she died.”
Lucy wanted it to be an accident, but she’d watched too much news to be confident that it would be the actual outcome.
