Page 29 of Best Served Cold

“Party favor,” she says with a lift of her eyebrows. “Mrs. and Mrs. Ginnis made them. The paper lanterns too. She’s shockingly crafty.”

That’s when the truth hits me like a stack of bricks. The guitar strap she gave me for Christmas…

She hadn’t bought it off some vendor. She’d made it for me herself.

Dammit. I’m pretty sure I blew it off with an insincere thank-you before shoving it into the back of my closet. I’d seen the gift as an offering from a woman who thrives on fulfilling obligations, but it was more thoughtful than I’d given her credit for. Way more so than the grocery store flowers I’d picked up for her and Patricia, who’d accepted hers with a sniff and almost certainly thrown them away before lunch.

“Wow,” I manage, eloquence itself, running my finger over the key chain before pocketing it. “That’s pretty damn impressive.”

“Right?” Hannah asks with a wink. “If she hadn’t already snapped herself up, I’d marry her.”

I get up, possibly to leave, but Sophie approaches me, that flower diadem still positioned across her forehead.

She parts her lips, and I feel?—

Well, I feel things you definitely aren’t supposed to feel about a woman who was almost your sister-in-law.

“It wasn’t that bad, was it?” she asks.

“It was beautiful,” Dottie says, walking up behind her. “I’m sure everyone here will remember it always.”

Otis mumbles something disparaging, but he doesn’t seem like he genuinely minds much.

“I thought it was going to be dumb,” I admit, surprised when Hannah’s the only one who scowls at me. “But it wasn’t. I wish my dad had done that instead of marrying his second wife. But if he had, I guess none of us would be here right now.”

Hannah bustles out of the room, heading back toward the kitchen with purpose, and Dottie smiles at me. “I certainly wish I’d done that rather than marry my ex-husband. But I’ve had two great loves since, and I never would have met them if I hadn’t suffered through that marriage. If we don’t go through hardship, we don’t have the wisdom to appreciate true happiness.”

“That sounds like a crock,” Hannah says, reappearing with a plate of cupcakes. There’s a little cake topper on one of them with two women in wedding dresses. “Let’s eat these in the dining room.”

We follow her into the dining area, connected to the living room by an open doorway.

“Grandma said we could use her china,” Otis reports as he pulls the plates out of the glass-front cabinet positioned against the wall.

They’re unsettling, porcelain plates with curlicues around the edges and giant eyes in the center.

“Gorgeous,” Dottie says. “Simply gorgeous. I’ll have to ask Penny where she got them. Set one extra, loves, so we can pretend our Briar is here.”

“As long as I get her cupcake,” Otis jokes, setting an empty plate at the end of the table. Its eye stares up vacantly.

We position ourselves around the table, Sophie sitting across from me and next to Briar’s empty spot. I watch unabashedly as she pulls the topper out of her cupcake and sucks frosting off the end of it.

They’re spice cupcakes with cream cheese frosting—another surprise, because I’d heard my stepmother say the wedding cake was vanilla upon vanilla, something I’d laughed about with Travis.

The others make small talk, but I keep quiet, lost in my head. After we finish, I nod to Otis. “Let’s clean up, man.”

His mouth opens, closes. “Jonah never cleans up.”

“Which is why Jonah isn’t getting married, or getting laid,” Hannah says archly, tilting her head. Her red hair brushes the tops of her shoulders.

“I don’t have any sexual prospects at this table,” Otis replies.

She snorts in disgust, or amusement, I couldn’t say which. “You wouldn’t if Briar were here either, you know.”

“And you won’t have any prospects anywhere if you don’t learn to clean up after yourself,” I say, figuring the kid could use some solid advice. I always cleaned up after myself. At my mom’s, because she needed me to clean up after her too, more often than not. And at my dad’s, because Patricia gave me a hard time when I didn’t.

I can feel Sophie watching me curiously, or maybe suspiciously, as we clear the table of dishes before settling around it again.

“Oh goodness,” Dottie says, her gaze flying to the clock positioned over the door. “I have to go home, my loves. Bear and I are babysitting for some of our grandchildren tonight.”

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