Sarah shrugs. “God knows. You’ll have to ask her, Lil. Be upfront, and demand to know why she’d do that. Otherwise, what else has she got planned?”
My eyes go wide as I think of all the things she could undo without my knowing.
“This is like something out of a book,” Sarah says, biting down on her lip.
“You’d know,” I say, laughing. “It’s so ridiculous it’s almost funny.” I sober when I imagine myself walking down the aisle in a short gown, and then being surprised by a venue change. “I’ll have a talk with Bessie, and then see what Olivia has to say.”
Later that evening I’m as sick as I was the night before. If the ground opened up and swallowed me I’d be OK with that. It’s like being seasick, as I roll slowly over in bed lest I start retching again.
Damon arrives home as the snow falls hard outside. I’ve hardly moved all day, and I know the house will be arctic without the fire lit. He enters the bedroom, his complexion rosy from cold. “Lil,” he says, and kneels beside the bed, surveying me. “Have you eaten?”
I shake my head no.
“How about I fix you some soup?”
“No, I’m OK.” I’m still too queasy to think of food. I pat the bed. Damon shuffles around to the other side, takes his boots off and gently hops in beside me. He pushes tendrils of curls softly from my face.
“What did the doctor say?”
“He took some blood tests, just in case, but thinks it’s just a twenty-four-hour thing. I should be OK tomorrow.”
“I hope so,” Damon says. “It was the strangest feeling, glancing across the road today and you weren’t there.”
“I missed you.”
He groans, and pulls me in for a kiss. “I missed you more. Next time you’re sick, I’ll stay home. Everything else can wait.”
I smile. “You’d close your shop, just like that?”
“I would.”
I drop my gaze, collecting my thoughts so I can tell Damon without making it a blubber-fest. I feel silly crying over the fact I thought I was pregnant. “I took a pregnancy test.”
His eyes go wide, and he pulls back and searches my face.
“Oh,” he says, reading my expression.
“Not this time,” I try to keep the disappointment from my voice.
He presses his lips together. I know he wants this as much as me. “It’s OK. Maybe we just need to try harder.” He gives me a silly smile, trying to lighten up the mood.
I laugh. “Well, OK.”
We lay silently staring into each other’s eyes. I commit every nuance of his face to memory. The tiny thin scar he has above one eyebrow, a relic from a childhood bike tumble. The starburst pattern in his deep brown eyes, like miniature fireworks. The love I feel threatens to swallow me up whole sometimes. Real love, it makes life come alive and when we’re like this together, in the quiet, any doubts about Olivia float away. I’m determined to get to the bottom of her antics without Damon getting tangled up in it. But right now, I’m going to enjoy snuggling in Damon’s arms while the snow falls heavily outside.
The next morning, still fragile, I head to the café.
“Well, lookie here,” CeeCee says as I untangle my scarf and walk through the front door. “Oh, Lil, you pale as a ghost. This ain’t good right before your wedding. How you feelin’?”
“I’m good, Cee. How are you? I felt so guilty leaving you here.” The café looks the same as it always does; one day off and I half expect things to have changed. Well, aside from the gap where one of our display fridges used to be.
“Don’t you worry ’bout me.” She huffs, and I know she’s worried about the wedding cake and what I’ll say. “Lil, I’m so sorry…”
“Cee, don’t be. There’s nothing we can do about it now. I just hope we have enough time to make another one. And this time, we’ll ban her from the café, just until it’s safely delivered to the restaurant.”
“Oh, Lil. It was terrible…when I saw the fridge come down, and your mamma fly through the air to catch it, golly…” We start laughing on account of Mamma’s clumsiness. She has trouble boiling water at the best of times. Though without her we would have been in a pickle; there’s no way CeeCee would have been able to cope alone.
Our talk is cut short as the doorbell jingles, and a flurry of customers arrive.
“Hey, Georgia,” I say to a regular of ours. She comes in most mornings with her little boy Matthew. “The usual?” I ask.
“Yep,” she says, smiling. “But Matthew wants two gingerbread men, says he’s earned it on account of his school report.”
I raise my eyebrows at Matthew. “Is that so?”
His big brown eyes look earnest as he says, “My teacher says I can read as good as the class above me. She sent Ma a letter and everything.”
Matthew had all kinds of problems when he started school. He couldn’t make sense of the words like other kids. Georgia struggled for the last two years trying to work out how to help him. She found an amazing tutor called Jo, who diagnosed his dyslexia. They’ve been working closely with him ever since.
I bend down to Matthew’s height. “Do you really think two gingerbread men are enough? I mean, that kind of brilliance needs to be celebrated. How about I give you some gingerbread men to take home, and you can choose whatever you want out of the Christmas display?”
He claps his hand over his mouth and looks up at his mother. She nods yes. Turning back to me, he says in a hushed tone, “Out of the window display? Anything?”
I scruff his hair. “Anything. You earned it.”
He shrieks and runs to the window.
Georgia and I exchange smiles as Matthew comes bouncing back with one of the chocolate Christmas boxes that are about the size of his head. “Whoops,” I say. “I take no responsibility for the ensuing sugar high.”
Georgia laughs. “I don’t see any signage, Lil, that says I can’t leave him here while I go shopping.”
I tap my chin. “Er…it’s around here somewhere.”
Matthew sits in his favorite chair by the fire, and commences eating. Chocolate crunches and cracks and falls all over the floor
