“Luckily for you I’ve never done an asinine thing in mylife,” she said, and winked, because not even Mary could say that with a straight face. Then, more serious, settling back in her chair and using a garlic breadstick as a pointer, she said, “Do you think he’s cute?”
I grabbed the breadstick from her before anybody saw the direction in which she was waggling it. “He’s aguest,” I said.
“What are you, the one-man human resource department of the Fernweh Inn?” She plucked the breadstick out of my hand and threw it across the table. “Yo, Shelbs. Hot or not?” She jerked her finger in Harrison’s direction.
Shelby, picking up the breadstick from where it had ricocheted off her forehead, took a thoughtful bite and considered. “Hot,” she decided after a moment. “Really hot. He’s not a birdhead, is he?”
I nodded. “He’s new.”
“And the girl?” Abigail asked. All conversation at the table had ceased, and now seven eager pairs of eyes were staring openly at the Lowrys’ table.
“Sister,” Mary said.
“The girl’s pretty too,” Eloise said, in her usual thoughtful manner. “What’s her name?”
“Prudence,” Mary said.
“Prue,” I corrected, perhaps a bit too quickly.
“Ohhh,” Vira said, nodding.
“What oh? Oh what?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she replied quickly, filling her mouth withmashed potatoes so she wouldn’t have to answer.
“Ohhh,” Shelby echoed. She nodded appreciatively. “Yeah, that makes sense. She’s definitely your type. She looks like she belongs on a picnic blanket under the Eiffel Tower, eating a baguette or something.”
“You guys are being assholes,” I said.
“You’rebeing a hypocrite,” Mary countered, and stole a carrot from my plate.
Eloise, angel that she was, changed the subject then to something no one could resist gossiping about for the rest of dinner: was Joel Howard, owner and proprietor of Joel’s Diner, actually going to do as he’d been threatening for years and stop having free fries on Friday?
“But it’s calledFree Fries Friday,” Abigail said, horrified, and they were off, a mile a minute about how Joel was on pretty thin ice with all of them, if the rumors were true.
“Thanks for changing the subject,” I said to Eloise later, when the dinner was over and Aggie and Peter were setting up the dessert table.
“Honestly, they’re too nosy sometimes,” she replied.
“I haven’t really liked anyone since Verity,” I said. “I think my sister is just thrilled at the prospect. Especially if she wants to go after a guest. Strength in numbers, I guess.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Eloise insisted. “It’s a small island. I think it’s important to keep some sort of privacy.”
I waited until the guests had had the first pickings of thedessert table and then grabbed a plate for myself. Aggie’s cinnamon cheesecake was unreal and aside from that she’d made four different kinds of brownies, twelve types of cookies, an assortment of mini pies, and a cake made as the exact replica of the inn. I took a little bit of everything.
It was cooler out now, but Peter had gotten the fire pit going, and the fire caught on the wind and blew warm air all over the yard. I brought my plate over to one of the benches that dotted the lawn, looking out over the southern tip of the island and the dark ocean beyond. I’d been avoiding Mary and the others pretty deftly so was both annoyed and discouraged when I heard footsteps behind me—and then immediately terrified and thrilled when Prue asked if she could sit with me.
“Yes! I mean, sure. I mean, if you want to,” I said, sliding over, hating myself for how hard words could be.
“If you don’t mind,” she said. She sat down and showed me some fluorescent-colored liquid in a paper cup. “Do you know what this is? It was in that enormous, car-sized bowl,” she said.
“Ah, that’s Albert’s Postal Punch. Be careful with it; it’s sort of disgusting and also unrealistically strong.”
“Unrealistically strong, I like that,” she said, smiling. The moon was out and high in the sky, and that, coupled with the lights from the lanterns that were scattered around the lawn, made Prue look ethereal, almost too pretty to focus on. Then she took a sip of punch and immediatelyspit it out in an impressive arc onto the grass, and I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing, just barely managing not to snort.
“God, whatisthat?” she said, coughing.
“I warned you.”
