AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Trent jerks his head her way. “What’d you do?”
“I—I went to a nearby town and called Beryl. She can come to the wedding.”
Trent launches out of his chair. “What?” he growls.
I stand, too, and clap my hand on his shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay.”
He wrenches away from me. “No, it’s not. I don’t want her there.” Olivia’s expression crumples. “Trent, you want to marry Maggie. That’s the end goal. That’s why we’re all here. If the way to get her down that aisle is to put up with Beryl at the wedding, that’s what has to happen.”
“She doesn’t have a right to be there,” he seethes, his jaw tight. “I didn’t invite her for a reason.” He turns to me. “Can you believe this?”
Now the two of them are facing me.
My best friend and business partner… and his little sister.
His little sister that I practiced fake kissing with, this morning.
What am I supposed to do in a situation like this? Being raised on a ranch and then spending my twenties fishing, skiing, and flying helicopters really didn’t prepare me for situations like this.
Heck, I’d rather fly a chopper through a blizzard than figure out a tactful thing to say right now.
I really don’t want to say the wrong thing and make either one of them mad. Better to keep my mouth shut.
Olivia throws her hands up and glares at her brother. “You drive me freaking crazy, you know that? We’re family—we’re supposed to help each other out. I’mhelpingyou, remember? You asked me to. You can’t have it both ways, Trent. You can’t punish mom for being an absent parentandmarry Maggie. Maggie’s too good of a person. She sees right through that. She sees you’re only punishing yourself.”
“Did you just say ‘mom’?” Trent repeats. “Since when do you call her mom? You’ve called her Beryl for years.”
Olivia’s face reddens. “I—I don’t know, it just—Look, I don’t know, alright! This is confusing for me, too. I had to suck up my pride and call her and pay for her ticket. Didn’t thinkthatwould ever happen again—me, buying her a ticket to anything—but now it’s done, and you think that was easy for me? It wasn’t.”
I want to be somewhere else.
Anywhere else.
The three of us never even go near the topic of mothers when we hang out. Now we’re deep in it, and not just adiscussion about mothers in general, either. That would be bad enough. Here we are, hiding out behind a yurt, eyeball-deep in a conversation about their mother.
A woman who really messed up, as far as I can tell.
She was young when she got pregnant with Trent by mistake. I think Trent’s told me she was only twenty-one, twenty-two, somewhere around there. She got hitched to the guy who knocked her up, an actor on whatever soap opera they both worked on. They had Olivia not long after, then the whole thing fell apart.
Trent and Olivia both get as worked up as badgers, whenever the name Beryl comes up. I know what an angry badger is like because one charged out at me once when I was out in a field on the family ranch, trying to fix a leaky irrigation pipe. It snarled at me and stood up on its hind legs.
I glance over at Olivia and see that she has tears in her eyes.
Shoot. That’s even worse than seeing her angry. She swipes the tips of her fingers across her wet lids.
“All I’m trying to do is help you. You could show a little gratitude, you know.”
Her hair shines in the sun as she whips around and storms away from us.
“Help me?” Trent repeats, with a gesture to me. “She thinks this is helping?”
“She wants to get you down the aisle,” I tell him.
I watched Olivia hatch this plan. I saw how hopeful she was yesterday. How nervous she was this morning.
I know that she had to summon courage to make that call. “Like she said, it probably wasn’t easy, calling your mom up.”
Trent scowls at me. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”
