Page 67 of The Wedding Favor

“Ending up in jail was a big eyeopener.”

“You did get those tattoos in the slammer, didn’t you?”

“It was just for the night. Drunk and disorderly. I was basically becoming exactly what my dad always said I’d become.”

“Your dad loves having you home, you know that, right?” Eli Ramos had talked non-stop about Abe’s return for weeks before he and Hallie arrived. “I’m honestly surprised he didn’t rent out a couple of billboards and hold a parade in your honor.”

Surprise flashed in his eyes. “Really? The two of us could never see eye-to-eye on anything. I was always the disappointment. I wasn’t good at school. Didn’t want to go to college.”

He paused, but I kept quiet. I wanted him to keep talking.

“I think I needed to leave, but that doesn’t mean it was easy.”

“And now? How are things with him?”

“Better, but it feels like I’m always trying to prove myself to him, to get him to see I’m not that same kid. I don’t want to give him another reason to push me away.”

My heart turned over. I understood this more than he knew. In my own way, I was desperate to prove myself to my mom, and especially to Mae. But I was afraid and I’d learned that it was easy to cover up fear with other things—sarcasm and indifference and, well, lying.

“Nobody can do that for very long,” I murmured.

Neither of us said anything else, but the sounds of a July evening in Two Harts surrounded us. The cicadas sang; farther away, toads croaked against the soft but insistent rhythmic beat from inside. Fiery shades of orange lit up the sky as the sun began to set.

Abe and I sat there quietly, a gentle, comfortable silence between us. I couldn’t think of any other place I’d rather be.

TWENTY-FIVE

“My first part in a play, I was the incomparable Sylvia. She died in the first scene. But I made sure her death was memorable.”

—excerpt from the unpublished memoir,

Darling, I Must Say by Gloria Hayes

The heat wave started that next week with temperatures well over a hundred degrees of humidity and scorching hot sun. Hallie and I weren’t willing to go anywhere that didn’t involve close proximity to ice water and air conditioning. So, the two of us were parked in front of the television, watching one of my guiltiest pleasures—The Beautifully Broken.

It was only the cheesiest, over-the-top, best soap opera to end all soap operas. It had been on for decades. Grammie watched it every day religiously and some of my best memories came from being home sick from school when she’d let me watch, too.

“Wait, is Juliet dating the doctor or his brother?” Hallie asked from her spot on the couch.

“Okay, keep up.” I shoved popcorn in my mouth and spoke around it. “Juliet is dating the doctor, his brother the lawyer, and their cousin, who’s a… I’m not sure what he does, but he does it on a motorcycle. None of them know that they’re all dating the same woman.”

“But I thought the doctor was married to that nurse.”

“Oh, he is.”

“Whoa.” She grabbed a handful of popcorn and stared at the television. Juliet had just arrived at a secret doctor’s appointment to find out if she was pregnant. Like she even knew who the father was. Man, I loved this show. “That’s a lot of boyfriends.”

“Pffst. She’s an amateur. One season, Beverley juggled six different men besides her husband. She’s a legend though.”

“Dad probably doesn’t want me to watch this, huh?”

“Technically he didn’t say you couldn’t watch it.”

Hallie grinned and stuffed more popcorn in her mouth.

My phone rang. “It’s your dad.”

“How’s it going?” he asked. In the background, I could hear the clang of metal against metal.