Page 36 of The Wedding Favor

Gloria waved a hand leisurely. “One must see all the possibilities before making the final choice. Oh, that’s a good one. Write that one down.”

“Of course, your majesty.” I took out my phone and typed it into my notes app. This collection of random thoughts was called “Quotes for Gloria’s Memoir.” It would be a bestseller, she said. When she got around to writing it. I plopped on the bed. “Now, why are you frowning?”

“Iris, I’ve told you this before. I do not frown. Frowns produce wrinkles. I do not have wrinkles.”

I smirked. Sure, she looked good for her age, but she was eighty-seven. “I like wrinkles. Means you’ve lived through some things.”

“There are other ways to tell what I’ve lived through that don’t involve it showing on my face.” She waved her hand in the air with the regalness of a queen. “Now, you may lie to me.”

“Okay, fine. You don’t have a single wrinkle. It’s amazing how young you look. You can’t be a day over thirty-five.”

“Thank you.” Her smile was smug, but I couldn’t help noticing she looked tired. Makeup couldn’t quite conceal the dark circles under her eyes.

“You feeling okay?”

“I’m fine.” Shoulders slumping, her gaze drifted to the large bank of windows behind me. “It’s George. He’s not doing well. They moved him to the third floor today.”

“I’m so sorry,” I murmured.

I’d learned in my time volunteering at Shady Cove that the worst part of getting old wasn’t declining health or slow loss of independence; it was losing people you loved. If you lived long enough, you had to watch everyone pass on—friends, family, even children. That was a kind of loneliness that took up space in a person’s bones.

“It’s how life works, isn’t it? He just reminds me of someone from a long time ago.” Her eyes took on the dreamy haze of memories. “A boy I knew.”

Gloria loved to reminisce about her days in New York, working as a Rockette, meeting her husband, their high society life, but she rarely brought up anything about growing up in Two Harts. It was like she wanted me to believe she’d hatched as a fully formed diva. Sometimes I believed it.

“Who?” I asked.

“The boy next door. He was my best friend. We did everything together,” she said, her eyes soft, expression wistful. “Everyone thought one day we’d marry, but I knew differently. I was leaving Two Harts as soon as I could.”

“What happened to him?”

With a shrug, she pulled out of her memories. “I don’t know exactly. I went off to New York, but I thought about him all the time. I even came back a few years later. He was married with three children. It was the last time I saw him.”

“Do you regret it? Going to New York.”

“No regrets, darling,” she said firmly, slipping back into Diva Mode. “We regret nothing. We make our choices, and we accept the consequences—good or bad.”

“Why does everyone sound like a fortune cookie these days?” I muttered.

“I don’t know about fortune cookies, but that was another good one. Write that one down, too. I’m especially brilliant today.”

I rolled my eyes but dutifully typed out the sentence so it could join the dozens of others there.

“Now tell me about this new job of yours.”

“How do you know about that?” I asked. “I just started yesterday.”

“I have my ways,” she said. But it was probably one of the nursing aides. Maggie was her favorite and she always had good gossip. “Come on now. I’ve heard you’re a nanny for a man with a lot of tattoos who works on cars. I’ve heard he’s very attractive. Maggie said he was a total snack.”

I shivered. “Never say those words again. They sound all kinds of wrong coming from your mouth.”

“I know a snack when I see one and I want to know how tasty this one is.”

“Make it stop.”

“Stop stalling and tell me.”

“It’s Abe, the guy I told you about who volunteered to go to the wedding with me. I owed him a favor so I’m watching his daughter a couple of hours a day. It’s no big deal.” I fussed with the hem of my black t-shirt.