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“Of course you can get the time off work. You’re not in the FBI anymore, Aggie. You just play around with software or whatever. Nobody’s going to die if you don’t install the latest Microsoft update for a week.”
Okay, so maybe I hadn’t told my family exactly what I did at work. “Analyst” covered a multitude of sins, and they’d never cared enough to dig any deeper.
“There are still rules. I’ll ask, okay?”
“You skipped Clarice’s rehearsal dinner and her post-wedding brunch because of work. I’m not letting you ruin my wedding too. I’ll call your boss myself if I have to.”
Did my presence truly matter that much? Odette and I had never been close as kids. Mack would back me up if I wanted to use work as an excuse, but if I stayed at home, my entire family would never stop reminding me of how bad a sister I was. The easiest approach would be to suck it up and go.
“I’m sure I can swap some of my time off.”
“Great! Jasper Rodenburgh’s still single, so Mom thought you could sit with him at the dinners.”
Fantastic. As if four days on Steppen Island with my family weren’t bad enough, now Jasper Rodenburgh had entered the picture? There was a reason he didn’t have a girlfriend, let alone a wife.
“I’ll be quite happy sitting on my own.”
“But then we’d have an empty seat, and the pictures would look unbalanced. Jasper doesn’t mind—Mom already asked him.”
I bet he wouldn’t mind. He’d asked me out seventeen times in high school, and I’d declined on every occasion. And when we were sixteen, I was ninety percent certain he’d groped my ass at the fairground, but we’d been in a crowd, so I’d never been able to prove it. In short, Jasper Rodenburgh was a sleaze.
“What if I mind?”
“Don’t be silly, Aggie. You can’t spend the rest of your life alone. It’s not healthy.”
“But I don’t need a man. I have a good job, a nice apartment, and a cat.”
Odette let fly with a peal of laughter. “But don’t you want to be a mom someday?”
“No?”
“Then the next thing you know, one cat will have turned into ten, and everyone will be calling you the crazy cat lady.”
Which was far better than being called Mrs. Rodenburgh, but sometimes, having a conversation with Odette was like talking to a wall. It was time to take a different approach.
“My boyfriend might get upset if I spend four days with another man.”
“Your…boyfriend?”
Oh, that little hesitation. I loved it. I was still going to hell for the lie, but spending my afterlife in a fiery pit couldn’t be much worse than growing up as the middle Lerner sister.
“We’ve been seeing each other for a few months now.”
“Really?” Odette slipped into gossip mode. “Tell me everything. What’s his name?”
“Damn, my other phone is ringing.”
“I can’t hear it.”
“That’s because it’s on silent. Gotta go—I’ll introduce you at the wedding. Have fun with the diet!”
I hung up, feeling like a bitch and a fraud, probably because I was both of those things. I had a month to either come up with a fake boyfriend or confess my sins, and neither option was palatable.
* * *
“What’s up?” Monday, and Mouse had gone to get lunch with Ziggy, so Mack dropped into the empty chair next to me and held out a bag. “Cookie?”
I shook my head. “No, thanks.”
