“I am too big to dance.”
David followed in her wake, a wide grin on his face. “You were the most beautiful woman out there.” He kissed her cheek and sat down next to her. “And you’re equally as lovely right here.”
At almost the exact same moment, Holman looked at me and said, “You have some frosting on the side of your nose—either that or a booger.”
“So Ridley,” I said, wiping my face with a napkin. “How are you feeling? You’re getting close, right?”
She leaned back in her chair, a contented and drowsy expression on her face. “Thirty-seven weeks. Dr. Wilson says I could go at any time.” She rested a hand atop her belly, which was now quite a bit more pronounced than it had been the last time I saw her. She was wearing a yellow chiffon Grecian dress with a plunging neckline to show off her ample chest, and of course, she looked amazing. But for the first time I noticed that her face was beginning to look just a tad bit swollen. Finally.
“Did Sheriff Haight ever figure out who poisoned you?” Holman dropped the question on David like a lead balloon. Small talk wasn’t Holman’s strong suit.
“Not conclusively,” he said, tearing his gaze from Ridley. “But we think it must have been Bennett. Wouldn’t you agree?” He looked at me.
It was a good question. I was bothered by the fact that there hadn’t been any physical evidence linking Bennett to David’s poisoning.
“Maybe Bennett just had a grudge against our whole family—who knows?” David said.
“If it were me, I’d want to know for sure,” Holman said.
“I do want to know,” David said. “But not tonight. Tonight I want to enjoy seeing my brother happier than I have in a long time, and the company of this gorgeous lady.”
Ridley gave David a blinding smile, I fought the urge to barf, and Holman furrowed his brow. “Well, that certainly seems shortsighted. You’re like Scarlett O’Hara—I’ll think about it tomorrow . . .” he said in a laughable impersonation of a Southern belle.
David, like his father, was not one to miss an opportunity. He stood up with glass in hand and said, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn what you think.” Then he walked off toward the bar to freshen their drinks.
A few minutes later, Holman and I were debating whether or not the lead singer of the band was lip-synching Norah Jones’s “Come Away with Me” (she so wasn’t) when Dr. H walked over to our table. “Ah, Mr. Holman and the lovely Riley!”
His warmth brought a smile to my face as it always did. I stood up to give him a hug.
“I dare say Tabitha planned everything perfectly. Not that we had any doubts about her planning capabilities,” he said with a chuckle. But after a moment, his face grew more serious. “How are you, my dear? You don’t seem quite yourself.”
“I’m okay,” I said, forcing a smile. “Or at least I will be.”
“She’s upset because she and her boyfriend Jay broke things off. He’s moving to Washington, DC, to take a higher position within the DEA. Riley understands this intellectually, but is having a hard time processing it emotionally.” Holman rattled off all of this like he was an anchorman on the six o’clock news. Then he added, “Particularly in this romantic setting.”
“Holman!” I hit his arm.
“What? Was that not an accurate description of why you’re in a funk?”
Dr. H looked from Holman to me. “Well, I wouldn’t lose hope. These things have a way of working out!”
I don’t know if it was Holman embarrassing me, or Dr. H’s kindness, but I felt tears sting the back of my eyes.
Dr. H again deftly swooped in. “Did I ever tell you about the time Louisa almost threw me out of the house?”
I shook my head, the abrupt change in subject stopping my tears.
“It’s true. We were talking about how we would each want to spend hypothetical lottery winnings, and she just couldn’t understand why a man my age would want to open a riverboat casino!” He laughed and got the fond faraway look that always accompanied a story of his dearly departed Louisa. “I told her, ‘The house always wins! We could be the house!’ And she screeched that she wasn’t going to end up married to a house, and threatened to throw me out if I was the sort of man who wanted to own a casino. Eventually we settled on the hypothetical decision to open a bird-feed store instead. Her compromise was that we could call it the Flamingo.”
Dr. H’s stories, particularly about Louisa, often left me both scratching my head and charmed, and I knew he had told this one to stop me from getting upset. I stood up and gave him another tight squeeze. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“All right, all right,” Dr. H said, as he released me. “I’m going to leave you young folks to carry on. It’s past my bedtime.”
The reception was beginning its third hour and I wondered how much longer I had to stay. Being surrounded by all of this happiness was getting tougher by the minute. So far I hadn’t humiliated myself by texting or calling Jay, but one more glass of champagne and who knows what I might do. Holman was deep in conversation with poor Ridley on what she planned to do with her placenta after she gave birth and since I wanted no part of that conversation, I pulled my phone from my tiny sparkly purse to check the time, and saw that I’d missed a call.
Hey Riley, it’s Lauren McCarty. Just wanted to let you know that I talked to my brother and he said he had given permission for someone to use our land as a part of some kind of investment or something. He said he’d done it months ago, back when Mom was still alive. I guess no one thought to tell
