Page 24 of The Wedding Favor

“You remember the taco incident?”

“No,” she gasped, looking downright scandalized. “A peach means that? Next you’ll tell me I can’t talk about bananas and cherries.”

“It doesn’t mean exactly that, but you get the idea.” I gently took her phone from her and pulled up the notes app where I’d made her a list of emojis she should avoid. “No bananas. No cherries. No peaches. No eggplant. You should probably just avoid all fruit. And food. How about no emojis?”

“Well, since all of you old, boring people have done nothing but complain, I’m leaving.” Gloria stood, a bit slower these days but with no less grace. “Iris, come.”

“You forgot to snap your fingers,” I said drily.

“I know, darling,” she said, looking down her nose at me. “It’s the arthritis. You’ll have to excuse the oversight.”

With a grin, I stood up and linked arms with her. We walked down the hallway toward one of the “premium” rooms where Gloria lived. Only the best for her.

“Have you ever played poker without cheating?” I asked, waving at a resident as we passed.

“Why do things the hard way when you can do them the easy way?” she said, patting her hair. The silver strands hung in a stylish bob and accentuated the cheekbones set in her thin face. Over the last year or so, she’d been losing weight, but when I asked, I never got a straight answer.

“Oh, I don’t know. Honesty? Integrity? The satisfaction of knowing you won on your own skill?”

Gloria harrumphed. “All of those things are very overrated.”

“You are not a good influence on me.”

She patted my hand. “Of course I’m not, darling. That’s why you like me so much.”

I grinned. She wasn’t wrong. I’d met Gloria my second day volunteering at Shady Cove. Back then, I’d been deep in my emo phase—blonde hair dyed black, thick black eyeliner, My Chemical Romance t-shirts, combat boots, and an expression of general disdain for everyone and everything. I was a real peach, a walking billboard for birth control. People in town whispered about how I was “going through so much and that explained it all.”

That day I was in the community room, the place where residents hung out doing puzzles, playing poker, holding movie nights. There was even a piano in there. Gloria had been doing none of those things. She was sitting at one of the tables, drinking from a fancy porcelain teacup and residing over her minions. Kathy, the social worker, introduced us and Gloria looked me dead in the eye and said, “Darling, why are you wearing such dreadful clothes?” She followed that with a lecture of what I should be wearing instead. (Hint: It involved skirts and high heels.)

The next time, she asked me what my natural hair color was because it was not “that ghastly black.” Every time I saw her, she harangued me about my makeup, my shoe choice, and the fake nose piercing. She didn’t hold back or tiptoe around me like everyone else in my life. Her honesty made me like her more.

When I discovered she had no one left to visit her, having outlived her husband, only sister, and never having had children of her own, it sealed the deal. She had wormed her way into my heart. For all the insults and the grand dame attitude, there was a sadness lurking behind her eyes.

Sadness was something I understood.

“So, tell me all about your exciting escapades this week,” she said as we made our way to her room. “Please tell me you’re doing someone.”

Halting, I dropped her arm and turned to her. “You did not just ask me that.”

“You’re young and beautiful. Seems like such a waste that all you do is work and visit us old people. You need a life, an adventure, a great love.” She waved her arms around dramatically.

Gloria liked to make a scene. At nineteen, she’d left Two Harts and gone to New York City to follow her dreams of fame. For a time, she even found it. First, as a Rockette, and then in a few plays. She eventually moved on to what she called her “second act,” which involved marriage to a much older (very rich) man.

“I’ll work on that.” We began inching down the hallway again.

“This town needs a tall, handsome stranger to show up and set his sights on you,” Gloria mused. Immediately, my brain conjured up a picture of Abe. He wasn’t a stranger or all that tall, but he was handsome. Objectively speaking. “Do you think I could hire one?”

“Gloria Hayes, did you just offer to hire”—I lowered my voice—“an escort?”

She shrugged. “Or an actor. Whichever is cheaper, I suppose.”

“Absolutely a bad influence.”

We paused to let the community cat, a big, tuxedo fellow named Bruce, slither through our legs in greeting. The cat was a stray that had adopted Shady Cove years earlier. He made his own rules, coming in and out of the facility whenever he wanted, although he did require regular feedings from the staff.

While he looked like an unassuming furball, Bruce had a superpower. Or a sixth sense, maybe? He predicted death. No, really. When he settled into a resident’s room for a few days in a row, within a few weeks, that resident was gone. Off to their final resting place. Waiting at the pearly gates. D. E. A. D. Honestly, he kind of freaked me out.

When we began walking again, I said, “Aidan showed up to my birthday party. It was a surprise.”