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Alana couldn’t bite back the groan in time, but it was muffled since her mouth was full of ice cream. “Yes,” Alana answered, swallowing. “Tilly’s arranging it.”
And that made her wonder if Egan had figured out a way to decline doing master of ceremonies duties at the unveiling.
“Loralee told me about it,” Colleen confirmed and then paused again. “I was, uh, wondering if you thought it’d be all right if I came.”
Now it was Alana’s turn to pause except hers turned into a big-time hesitation when she tried to grasp the request. Over the past three years, Colleen had mostly met Loralee anywhere but in Emerald Creek for their get-togethers. She’d come back to town a time or two to visit their aunt, but her sister had basically done a sneak in and out, knowing that she would get multiple stink eyes and even scowls from those who considered Egan the wronged hometown hero and Colleen the breaker of the hero’s heart.
“I wouldn’t be up front and center,” Colleen went on. “I’d hang back just to watch and well, be there.”
Alana nearly blurted out,Be there for whom?But Jack had been Colleen’s brother-in-law, and they had gotten along well. Still, if Jack had gotten the chance to learn about what Colleen had done to Egan, that “getting along” would have ended pronto. Jack would have taken Egan’s side.
Did that mean Egan would do the same for Jack?
Maybe. Brothers-in-arms and all that. It could mean that Egan would get past something his bestie had done even though he could never forgive his ex-wife for doing the same thing.
“Aunt Loralee said Egan probably wouldn’t be there,” Colleen went on, “or rather she said, he’d find a way out of it,” she amended. “So, I thought it would be okay especially since people will be focused on you and the painting.”
Alana sighed. She definitely didn’t want the focus. Heck, she didn’t want the life celebration, period, but her sister was wrong if she thought no one would notice her even if she stayed back.
“Even if Egan isn’t there, his friends and supporters will be,” Alana spelled out for her.
“I know, I know,” Colleen said almost like a whine. “And I also know I’ll deserve any raised eyebrows or whispers I get about what happened between Egan and me. But it’s been three years, and I want to be able to visit Aunt Loralee and you more often. For that to happen, people have to get used to seeing me again.”
“Whatever memories are better than elephants’, that’s what people around here have. I still get flak about a banana split I ordered two years ago.” Alana left it at that, but the bottom line here was that Colleen would get flak for a lifetime.
Would Jack have, too?
Maybe. But it wouldn’t have had the venom that folks aimed at Colleen. Jack could be forgiven because he had been all the things Egan was. Excuses would likely have been made about him being under so much pressure with his job that he’d caved and made a mistake.
Colleen hadn’t gotten such concessions. Not from the town. Not from Egan.
“I was hoping you’d think it would be all right,” Colleen concluded. “I guess the right thing to do would be for me to run the idea past Tilly.”
Alana wanted to groan again, but instead she took another bite of ice cream to give her a moment to think of how this would play out. Tilly wouldn’t want anything to spoil this big day she was planning. A day about Jack. And Colleen would be a serious distraction/gossip magnet, no doubt about that. So Tilly would tell Colleen—in the politest way possible, of course—to visit the memorial painting a day or two after the unveiling.
Alana felt a little cowardly for dumping that conversation on Tilly, but she didn’t have the bandwidth right now to deal with it.
“Yes, talk to Tilly,” Alana encouraged, and she welcomed the little dinging sound of the incoming call because it meant she could dole out a quick goodbye to her sister.
Alana soon regretted that, though.
She hit the answer button before she realized that it was a FaceTime call from her latest virtual date, a guy calling himself Lucky, which was probably wishful thinking on his part since he was after all on a virtual dating site.
After a glance, she was guessing he might not be actual date material for her since he appeared to be only in his early twenties. He had a gamer vibe going on with a PlayStation 5 T-shirt, bulky headphones now draped around his neck and a look in his eyes that conveyed it’d been a while since he’d seen a real human on a screen. She thought she saw specks of Cheetos on his chin.
“Sorry,” Alana immediately said, and she cut off adding anything about why she’d hit Accept Call. Instead, she frowned when she looked at the time—2:00 p.m. She did have a virtual date scheduled today, something she’d forgotten to cancel, but that wasn’t supposed to happen for another five hours. “You’re early,” she blurted out.
“Yep. I playAssassin’s Creedwith a group of guys, and we’re on our break. Figured I’d see if I could catch you while I was free.” He frowned, studied her. “Um, are you free?”
“Not exactly. I’m in the middle of...something,” she settled for saying. No way did she want to get into her meltdown or the cause for it. Especially since this “date” would be going nowhere. “You said on your profile that you were thirty-four.”
“Oh, that.” He grinned, as if there was something to grin about. “I changed it when I saw your profile pic. Figured you wouldn’t accept a date request if you knew I was twenty.”
“No, I wouldn’t have,” she admitted.
“See,” he said, as if proving a point. “This way, we meet and see how it goes. That wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t changed my age.” He studied her again. “You don’t look much like your profile pic. Was that like a fake or something you downloaded ’cause it kinda looked like Scarlett Jo. You know, Johansson. She’s hot and kick-ass. But you sort of look like maybe her older sister or something.”
She sighed because it was true. In the picture, she’d fixed her hair and put on makeup. She also hadn’t been crying for hours.
