Page 96 of The Wedding Favor

“This seems excessive.” The list filled up the entire page, front and back. This would be a fulltime job getting all this together, never mind attending the practices. How in the he⁠—

“There’s my girl,” a voice sang behind us. “Did you think you could come to City Hall and not see me?”

“Aunt Ali.” Hallie rushed to the doorway and flung her arms around Ali’s waist.

“What’s this I hear about you signing up to be in the pageant?” Ali grinned down at her niece.

I leaned a hip against the counter. “Wow. Less than twenty-four hours. That gossip tree is on fire.”

“Nothing happens that I don’t know about. It’s part of my charm.” She winked.

“Iris is signing up, too.”

“I’m sorry. Did you say Iris was entering?” Ali pressed a hand to my forehead. “Are you dying? Hearing voices? Do you have a brain tumor?”

I scowled. “It’s not that big of a deal. It’s just a pageant.”

“Do you hear the words coming out of your mouth?” She shook her head. “How did I not hear about this? Iris Sampson in a pageant. Oh, does Mae know? I should go text Mae.”

Everyone would know in hours, perhaps minutes. There was no turning back now.

Hallie and I watched as Ali wandered down the hallway to her office, muttering to herself.

THIRTY-SEVEN

“I was much too selfish to have children of my own,

and just wise enough to realize it.”

—excerpt from the unpublished memoir,

Darling, I Must Say by Gloria Hayes

“Prison, Iris, really?” Gloria said in her most theatrical voice when I found her in the community room working on a puzzle. She threw an arm across her forehead for added drama, shaking the table in the process and thus causing several puzzle pieces to fall to the ground.

“How do you already know?” I began picking up the fallen pieces. After Abe came home, I’d hightailed to Shady Cove to see Gloria, thinking she might let me lick my wounds. I don’t know why I thought that.

“Oh, it’s everywhere,” Mary said at the table next to ours. No conversation was private in this place. “My daughter called me and told me. She lives in Oklahoma.”

“It wasn’t prison,” I muttered from under the table. “It was the sober tank.” I hopped up from the floor. “I hit a man, and he deserved it.”

“Well, he was a man. Of course he deserved it.” Mary smiled sweetly. She might be wearing a t-shirt with a photo of all her kids and grandkids, but if it were ever discovered there was a body buried under her prized rosebushes, I would believe it.

“It sounds exciting. I shall call you my little jailbird,” Gloria said.

“Why do I come here again?” I plopped down and put my elbows on the table.

“Because you need someone to keep you grounded.” She patted my cheek. “That is me.”

“Ah, yes, you’re the most grounded person I know.” This was said ironically, considering she was wearing a zebra-striped caftan. In her ears were bright red earrings so large, they brushed her shoulders.

“And wise.”

“And wise,” I repeated.

“And beautiful.” She patted her hair. The gesture gave me a flash of what Gloria had been like when she was my age—with a megawatt smile that hid a sharp tongue. She would have been unstoppable.

“And beautiful. And might I add humble, too.”