Page 55 of The Wedding Favor

“No, you didn’t.” I pulled out my phone and thumbed to the invite she’d texted me. I’d checked it no less than three times in the last hour.

Megan waved a dismissive hand. “Must have been a miscommunication. Come in. Come in.”

We stepped into an entryway, a large space with vaulted ceilings that reached the second floor and showcased a fancy crystal chandelier.

Megan paused to inspect us. “You two obviously did not see the dress code. This is a garden meet-and-greet, after all.” Somehow her voice had taken on some weird affectation like she was a very rich white woman in the South circa 1850.

I looked down at Hallie’s purple t-shirt and jean shorts. My outfit was the same except in black. “I saw that it was in the garden and figured it was casual. I didn’t see anything about a dress code.” Hallie, still clutching my hand, scooted closer to me. I straightened and looked Megan dead in the eye. “Is there something wrong with what we’re wearing?”

She waved her hand around yet again. Maybe she hoped a magic wand would appear and she could make us disappear. “Well… shorts are most definitely not garden party wear. I could possibly find something for you two to borrow.” She pressed her lips together and shook her head, the feather on her hat trembling. “Unfortunately, I don’t think we’d have anything that would fit.”

Hallie turned her face into my side. Megan was really starting to piss me off. Who says stuff like that? And to a child? Yup, I was clearing out the snack table. Maybe I could take a hand towel or two from the bathroom.

I smiled at Megan. With lots of teeth. So maybe not an actual smile. “That’s so kind of you to offer. Although you are so much older than me, so I’m sure your dresses are much more… um, mature.”

Megan’s eyes narrowed and I swore I could hear her grinding her teeth.

“Should we get to the meeting? I don’t want to hold anything up,” I said, my voice sickly sweet.

“Yes, fine.” She gave her dress an aggressive tug. “You’re in luck, though. We haven’t actually started. We’re mingling. You do know how to do that, right?”

We passed by a giant, five-wick candle and I wondered if I could throw it at Megan’s head. Just for funsies. “I think we can manage to do that.”

Stiff-legged, Megan marched us through the house, all very minimalist beige and white without a trace of a toy or a shoe. If I didn’t know better, I’d say a child didn’t live here at all.

About forty people, all women and little girls, in various states of conversation were already in the garden. They all wore hats. Big, fancy hats to match their fancy garden dresses. I had a moment of feeling self-conscious and forced myself to push it away. It wasn’t my fault that we were underdressed. Especially when our hostess was going out of her way to make me look like a fool.

But I was no fool. Sometimes foolish? Yes. But not a fool.

The backyard was beautiful with a shimmering pool set off a distance. Elegant outdoor furniture in the same white and beige color scheme mingled with exotic, leafy plants in enormous planters on the large, paved patio. Mae and Chris’s backyard was bigger, but Megan’s was more sophisticated. There wasn’t an army of animal-shaped pool floats or towels draped off any place they could hang to dry. There wasn’t a swing set or trampoline or sandbox. Again, nothing in this yard spoke of a kid living here.

Elegant. Sophisticated. Magazine worthy. I hated it.

Megan immediately rushed off. Hallie tugged on my hand as we walked out onto the patio. She whispered when I leaned closer, “What’s mingling?”

Just hell on earth. But I kept it positive for the kid. I was the adult here. “It’s when you meet new people and get to know each other.”

“Oh.” She bit her bottom lip. “Um, what if I don’t know how to do that?”

I knelt beside her and took both her hands in mine. “Stick with me. We’ll do all the mingling. We will be a mingling machine. No one will ever again even want to mingle because they won’t be able to live up to our example.”

Hallie’s mouth quirked to the side. “Are you telling the truth?”

“No. Mingling is exhausting, but we have to get through all these people to find the food anyway.” I stood and held my hand out to her. “We got this.”

We turned toward the yard and got to work.

Forty long, tiresome, mind-numbing minutes later, I was seated at a round table, clutching a glass of lemonade and listening to a woman in her forties reminisce about her time as Miss Harris County 1996. She still had the hairstyle to prove it. Hallie had gone off somewhere with Audrina. Which I thought was a little rude of her, leaving me alone with these people.

“Of course, I didn’t win but it was such a life-changing experience,” the woman said, absently patting her helmet of bleached blonde hair. “Honestly, I’d enter the Miss Two Harts pageant myself except for that stupid age limit.”

“Oh, come on, no one would bat an eye if you lied about your age,” another woman said. “You don’t look a day over twenty-one.”

I choked on my lemonade. Exactly no one would believe that.

Bleached Hair Woman laughed. “Stop.”

“It’s true.”