His smile grew brighter. “Sara would love to hear that.” He glanced around, seemed to realize the room was empty. “Well, I just wanted to track you down and tell you how pleased I was to hear that you’re getting married. I wish you every happiness, Brooklyn.”
“Thank you, Rod.”
“Hey,” he said. “If you’re free sometime for coffee or a drink this week, let me know. I can even meet you tonight if you’re available. I’d love to catch up on old times.”
I almost rolled my eyes, but instead I just kept smiling. “I’d better check my schedule before I say yes.”
We exchanged phone numbers, then he gave me a warm hug. It brought back so many mixed feelings from those times in school. I had loathed the way he treated Heather, and my feelings had lasted for so many years. Now I was finding it hard to switch them around. But if I was going to be friends with Sara again, I would need to rekindle my so-called friendship with Rod.
“This was really a nice surprise,” I said. “Thank you so much for coming to see me.”
“It was nice for me, too.” He turned to leave, then glanced back over his shoulder. “Take care, Brooklyn.”
“You, too.”
* * *
• • •
That night, Derek was going out to dinner with his brothers, his partners from work, and some guy friends. It was as close as he was going to get to a bachelor party. I doubted he would tolerate anyone shouting “Surprise” and making him open twenty pink-wrapped gifts, but I hoped the guys would make sure he had a good time. Not that I was complaining about all those pink-wrapped goodies. My party had turned out to be awesome, once I got over my initial shock and befuddlement.
Since Derek would be out for the evening, I had decided to invite a few of my very closest girlfriends over for pizza and wine.
Robin and my sisters, of course, and my favorite neighbors, Alex and Vinnie and Suzie. I mulled over the possibility of inviting Heather and Sara. Granted, things had been pretty tense between them at the shower the night before, but at the last minute, I decided to text them both and invite them over. After all, if I really wanted to stay in touch with them, I needed to extend my own hand in friendship. If either of them decided not to show up, that was their choice. But I hoped that they would because, to be honest, I wasn’t sure when I would ever see either of them again.
Heather texted me right back to let me know she would be here, but that she had a meeting and might be a little bit late. Sara texted a few minutes later to say that Rod was going out with a few associates and she would love to come over for pizza. I texted back my address and directions and she texted back a thumbs-up.
“Good,” I murmured, and called to order the pizza.
* * *
• • •
An hour into my impromptu party, I realized that neither Heather nor Sara had arrived. I texted Heather first. “Are you lost?”
A minute later, she responded. “Sorry, I got stuck in a meeting. Will still try to make it if it’s not too late.”
“Okay. If not, let’s do coffee tomorrow.”
“Great!”
I took a sip of wine, then texted Sara the same message. “Are you lost?”
While I waited for her return text, I glanced around the room. Vinnie was showing everyone the latest pictures of Lily, who was rapidly growing into a beautiful little girl. I thought back to the night almost two years ago when the three of us and Gabriel were staying at a gorgeous old mansion near Lake Tahoe and got snowed in for a few days. It was on that trip that Vinnie and Suzie had found out that their best friends, Teddy and Maris, were killed in a tragic car accident and that their will stipulated that Suzie and Vinnie were to raise Lily as their own. The two women had accepted that challenging role and never looked back.
Robin was talking to Savannah about the gardens they had both planted in Dharma, London and China were laughing about the latest protection spell our mom had performed for Derek’s parents, and Alex was passing around her freshly baked batch of red velvet cupcakes. I grabbed one just as my phone signaled an incoming text.
“Ugh, I’m stuck working!” Sara wrote. “I’ll try to make it to your place, but it might be another hour.”
“That’s okay, come anytime,” I answered. “What R U working on?”
“Cornelia shipped a ton of books out here and they’re stored in the conference hotel basement. I have to bring them over to the convention floor.”
“Sounds awful.”
“Totally! She’s trying to kill my girlish spirit.”
“LOL. I’m so sorry. Hope you can make it.”
“Me, too. I’ll call you.”
After that, I got wrapped up in the party, laughing and sharing old family stories along with plenty of anecdotes about Derek and his amazing brothers.
Almost an hour later, my cell phone rang and I answered right away. “Hello?”
“It’s me, Sara.”
“Hi. Everything okay?”
“I’m still working, but I should be finished soon.”
“Are you all by yourself?”
“Yeah, but I can handle it,” she said, then sighed. “I’m just so annoyed with my boss. She really has it in for me.”
“I’ve got to meet this person. She sounds awful.”
“Believe me, she’s even worse than you can imagine. She’s—”
She didn’t finish the sentence so I waited. After a long moment of silence, I said, “Sara?”
“Sorry,” Sara replied. “I thought I heard something. This basement is kind of creepy. Let me get off the phone so I can finish up and come over. Save me a slice of pepperoni.”
“You got it.” I rejoined my guests, replenishing everyone’s drinks and bringing around more pizza. The party broke up around eleven o’clock and we never saw Sara or Heather.
* * *
• • •
The next morning Derek left early for a meeting at his office while I faced a shoe crisis. I couldn’t say what got into me, but I had decided that with Derek out of the house, this was a perfect time to try on my wedding dress with my newly dyed white lace shoes.
I loved my dress, but it was impossible to slip into it without someone helping me zip up the zipper. Instead, I slipped my arms into the sleeves and held it in place around my waist, then slid my feet into the heels.
Staring in the mirror, I confess I really felt like a princess. But . . . something was wrong. My shoes felt way too loose. I had to sit down on the edge of the bed to take them off. I stared at the lacy style and remembered how I had fallen in love with them at the shop. These were definitely my shoes. I turned them over to look at the soles where the size was stamped.
“That’s my size,” I muttered. “But . . . oh God.”
I felt as if I’d entered the Twilight Zone. Everything looked right, but something was very wrong. I tried them on again. Still too loose. “What am I going to do? I need new shoes.”
“Meow.”
I glanced down and saw Charlie staring up at me as if I was crazy or something. “Charlie, stop judging me and help. What am I going to do?”
“Meow,” she said, and gave my pretty lace shoe a delicate lick.
“You’re very cute but you’re no help at all.” Still uncertain what to do and feeling my heart rate climbing, I grabbed my house key and, clutching my dress so it wouldn’t fall off in front of any neighbors who might be leaving for work about then, ran down the hall to Alex’s apartment. She was my guru for all things related to clothing and shoes.
“What’s going on?” Alex said, tying the sash of her silk bathrobe more securely.
“Please help me,” I cried. “I tried on my wedding shoes and they don’t fit anymore.”
She smiled indulgently. “Well, you’ve been working out a lot. Maybe you’ve lost a shoe size.”
“It that really a thing? I’v
e never heard of losing weight in your feet.”
“It can happen,” she said enigmatically.
I was ready to start sobbing and she was going all inscrutable on me. “Alex, focus. I need new shoes.”
She grabbed my hand and pulled me into her apartment. “It’s going to be okay. Do you want a cupcake?”
“Of course I want a cupcake. And then I need new shoes.”
Still holding my hand, she led me over to her kitchen counter, where a tray filled with newly frosted chocolate mint cupcakes sat. It was amazing. She must have started baking them at five o’clock that morning. “Sit,” she said, slipping an apron on over my head. “Your dress is too beautiful to have crumbs falling all over it.”
“Thank you.” At least one of us was thinking clearly.
“Now have a cupcake and then we’ll see if we can make those shoes fit.”
While Alex finished dressing for work and I ate my cupcake, I texted both Heather and Sara, sending them each the same message. “Missed you last night. Can we get together sometime today?” I got no response from either of them. I wondered briefly if anything was wrong, but I couldn’t worry about that at the moment.
Alex came out to the kitchen dressed to kill in a black-on-black couture suit with a cinched waist and epaulets, and shiny black stiletto pumps.
“You look like a sexy four-star general who’s about to kick ass and take names.”
“Just the look I was going for,” she said with an impish grin. “Now let’s see about those shoes.”
“You’re way too dressed up to deal with my silly shoe crisis. You should go to work. I can handle this. I think.”
She rubbed my arm. “I’m never too dressed up to help you, Brooks.”
I covered my mouth with my hand. “Now I’m going to cry.”
She laughed. “Well, it’s about time. You’ve been so calm and cool during all these months of wedding planning, it’s downright unnatural. You haven’t had one nervous breakdown or a screaming fit or even a little crying jag. You deserve to have a good cry over ill-fitting shoes, so go for it.”
And so I did, briefly. She handed me a handful of tissues and I blew my nose a few times. But after another minute, I was completely bored with myself and my nose was stuffed up to boot. “Okay, I’m done,” I said. “Let’s go fix those shoes.”
“That’s my girl.”
Within minutes Alex had assessed the situation and suggested that I buy a narrow inner sole and a set of heel cushions that would fit inside my white lace heels. “You can pick them up at any good drugstore.”
“You think that’ll work?”
“Yes. You’re still basically the same shoe size. Your foot is just slightly narrower from all the working out. The cushions should solve the problem and they’ll also help keep the shoes from rubbing against your heel. Shoe crisis averted.”
“You saved my life,” I said, giving her a hug.
“It’s what I do,” she said with a modest shrug, and took off for work.
I still couldn’t believe I’d lost weight in my feet. I mean, I’d been watching my diet for months and exercising like a champ, but still. That was downright weird.
* * *
• • •
An hour later I was working on a special project, a beautiful little book of Shakespeare’s sonnets that I planned to give to Derek as a wedding gift. When we first started dating, he had read a few of his favorite sonnets to me and I had almost swooned at the romance of it all. Maybe the British accent had something to do with it, but I knew he would love this book. I had asked my friend Genevieve Taylor of Taylor’s Fine Books to keep an eye out for the perfect book and she had come through for me. It was small but lovely and in excellent condition with bright white pages and a number of charming colored illustrations throughout, each guarded by tissue. The book was covered in rich burgundy morocco leather with shiny gilding along the edges of the pages. I had tooled a pretty design of a stylized tree on the front cover and added gilding to the leaves. All that was left to do was construct a simple slip-case-style book box covered in matching burgundy linen with a ribbon pull.
I had just finished cutting the boards for the box when Derek arrived home. I tucked the book and materials away and joined him in the kitchen while he made himself a sandwich.
While we chatted about his office meeting, I texted Heather again. “Coffee today or tomorrow?”
She responded immediately. “Tomorrow better than today.”
“Okay,” I typed. “I’ll check in tomorrow morning.”
Then I texted Sara again but heard nothing back from her. I stared at my phone. “Hmm.”
“What is it?” Derek asked.
“I never heard back from Sara last night and now she’s not answering her texts.”
“Did you try calling?”
“What a good idea,” I said, smiling. I’d gotten so used to texting that the idea of actually dialing the phone and speaking to a person had become an odd concept. I pushed her number and waited. The phone rang six times and then went to voice mail. I left a quick message and ended the call.
“No answer?”
“No.” I frowned at my phone. “I can’t believe she would blow me off like this. We left each other on pretty good terms and then her husband, Rod, stopped by my classroom to say hello.”
“How did that work out for you?”
I sat on the kitchen stool and watched him work. “It was weird, but not too bad. Of course, I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him. I think he wants me to give the book back but he wouldn’t come right out and say it.”
“Where is the book right now?”
“It’s in the safe.”
“Good.”
“I’ll try Sara one more time.” I dialed her number, but once again the call went to voice mail. I gazed up at Derek and shrugged. “I don’t know why I’m worried. Her boss has been riding her pretty hard so maybe she’s too busy working to check her messages.”
“But you don’t think so.”
I grimaced. “I really don’t.”
“Would you feel better if we tried to track her down?”
Just another reason why I loved that man. He always knew the exact right thing to say.
“Yes. She might still be tied up with work, but I can’t see her ignoring all those texts.” I frowned. “Maybe she lost her phone.”
“I’ll finish my sandwich and then let’s go find out.”
* * *
• • •
We walked a few blocks over to the conference center and into the main exhibit hall. Dozens of organizations, publishers, bookstores, and vendors had rented booths where they were selling their products or giving away books and swag. The Glen Cove College Library, where Sara worked, had rented a small space to display the books published by the college press along with a number of favorite local authors and hometown memorabilia.
Sara wasn’t in the booth, but another woman dressed in a business suit smiled at us. I got a quick look at her badge and saw that her name was Darla.
“Good afternoon,” she said. “Are you looking for anything in particular?”
“Yes. Actually, I’m looking for Sara Martin.”
“Oh.” The woman glanced around nervously and lowered her voice. “I haven’t seen Sara for hours. She didn’t show up this morning for her shift in the booth. I tried texting but didn’t hear back from her.”
“Is she usually pretty responsible?”
“Are you kidding? Responsible is her middle name.”
“When did you last see her?” Derek asked.
She leaned closer. “Last night. Our boss insisted that we cart all of our books over here before we could clock out for the day.”
“Is that Cornelia?”
Her eyes widened. “How did you know? Oh wait, Sara must’ve told y
ou about her.” Darla shook her head in disgust. “She’s a piece of work and she’s been even worse on this trip.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah. Well, that’s why they pay us the big bucks.” She snorted. “Anyway, we had to make a dozen trips last night carrying tons of books. By the end I was exhausted so Sara offered to finish up.”
“What time was that?”
“About eight thirty or nine?”
I gazed up at Derek. “That was about the time I texted her to see where she was.”
“If you see her,” Darla whispered loudly, “tell her the boss is still cranky.”
“Why is that?” Derek asked.
“Because we’re still missing a couple of boxes of books.” Darla shrugged. “I’m not sure how they went missing. It’s not like Sara to miscalculate stuff like that.” She grinned suddenly. “Maybe she did it to get back at Cornelia. The woman is the original grouch.”
Despite my worry, I flashed her a friendly smile. “I’ll give Sara the message.”
“Thanks.”
We started to walk away, but I thought of something else. It was probably a dumb question, but I wanted to know just how grouchy Cornelia could be. “Just curious. Did you have to move all the books by hand?”
“Oh, goodness no. We borrowed a hand truck from the booth next door. It wasn’t industrial strength, but it helped.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Derek and I walked away. I glanced around, still hoping to catch a glimpse of Sara, but something told me I wouldn’t have any luck. “Let’s check her hotel. It’s the InterContinental, right across the street.”
When we reached the hotel lobby, I asked the clerk to call Sara’s room. He didn’t have any more luck than I’d had, so I pulled out my conference badge and showed it to him. “My boss wanted me to get some boxes that you have stored down in your basement and take them over to the exhibit hall. Can you point the way?”
“Yes, ma’am. In fact, I’ll take you there.”
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