I had always told her that someday, when I grew up, I wanted to be just like her, and seeing her now only reinforced that idea. “God, you look good!”
“It’s Eddie,” she said, her brilliant smile lighting up with extra wattage. “He’s responsible.”
“Does he come in a bottle?” I asked as she took my arm and led me over to the baggage carousel.
“Better,” she said with a mischievous grin. “He comes in a snack size, and I’m always hungry, if you catch my drift.”
I giggled. “Still the same unfiltered Ellie, I see.”
“Still the same blushing Abby, I see.”
“Some things never change.”
“Some things should! Now, let’s get your bag and blow this Popsicle stand.”
We waited by the carousel for about fifteen minutes before bags from my plane began making their slow turn around the line. I kept my eyes peeled for the big blue suitcase I’d packed full enough to pop the zipper. “There it is,” I said, finally seeing it tumble down the chute.
“Hey, Abs?”
“Yeah?” I said, as I moved in closer to the conveyor belt.
“I don’t want to alarm you, but there’s a guy over there who won’t stop giving you the evil eye.” I looked up from the belt to where Ellie was staring and caught sight of the guy from the plane whom I’d freaked out. When our eyes met he glared at me for several seconds before disappearing into the crowd. “Yikes,” Ellie said as he turned away. “What the hell did you do to him?”
“Introduced him to my crew,” I said as I pulled my bag from the carousel.
“Ah,” Ellie said. “I’m thinking he didn’t much care for their opinion?”
“Not so much their opinion as their very existence,” I replied with a smile. “I think, however, I might just have given him some good food for thought. You ready?”
“This way,” she said, and we headed out of the terminal.
A short walk later we stopped in front of her shiny brand-new Lexus SC 430 and I whistled low in appreciation. “Biotech sales must be up lately,” I said as Ellie opened the trunk.
“I did pretty good this year,” Ellie said, rubbing her palm along the back quarter panel.
“I’ll bet,” I said as we got into the car. “You still drive like a crazy person?”
“Is there any other way to drive?” she asked with a grin as she zipped out of the parking space.
I said a few prayers as we took corners at alarming speed before coming to an abrupt stop behind a few cars in line to pay the garage attendant. “So, about where to put you,” Ellie began while I took deep, calming breaths. “You could stay at my condo, but Eddie’s sister is flying in from Utah and she’s got the guest bedroom. That leaves a blow-up bed in the living room, which would be okay for a night or two, but not for a week. So I was thinking you could stay at Aunt Viv’s.”
“She’s still alive?” I asked in surprise. Ellie’s aunt Vivian was actually her great-aunt on her father’s side, who had lived on the North Carolina coastline for as many years as I could remember. During the summers Vivian would come and stay with Ellie’s parents, driving her mother crazy and treating her father like the little boy she had raised after his parents were both killed when he was six. One spring, before Viv’s annual visit to Michigan, Ellie and I had been invited to her house for a week. I still remember the glorious old home placed scenically on a bluff that had withstood so many hurricanes and tropical storms. She lived in a gigantic old Victorian on top of a cliff, and the view from nearly every window was spectacular. A half dozen years ago, Viv had moved to Colorado, her old home finally too much for her to keep up with.
“Yeah, she’s still going strong. You’d never know how old she is by her energy level; that woman is as spry as a someone half her age! And in case you thought she’d softened in her old age, let me assure you she’s as mean as ever, but I figure you can take her,” Ellie said, cutting me a sideways wink.
I chuckled. What I remembered of Vivian was that she had never felt restricted by the rules of polite society. If she had an opinion about anything, she certainly wasn’t afraid to share it. I had always liked the old woman, so I was willing to give the sleeping arrangements a try. “Okay. I’m not a big fan of blow-up mattresses anyway.”
“Cool. How about we go to my place and grab some grub first? After that we’ll hike on over to Viv’s and get you settled, okay?” Ellie said as she gave her ticket and some money to the attendant.
“Sounds like a plan—Ohmigod Ellie! Friggin’ slow down!” I exclaimed as she squealed out of the garage and zoomed down the ramp toward the freeway.
“Relax, Abby. It’s not like I’m gonna kill us,” she said, and the moment she said that I got the worst feeling. I shivered, then cinched my seat belt even tighter and held on to the dashboard for dear life.
We arrived at Ellie’s condo thirty minutes and about fifteen more shrieks from me later. I jumped out of her car almost before it had come to a complete stop and bent over to touch terra firma. “Safe ground!” I said.
“Drama queen,” Ellie said with a hearty laugh as she got out on her side.
“Who taught you how to drive?” I demanded as I stood back up.
“My brother. Why?”
“I’m going to hunt him down and shoot him! Ellie, is your car registered as a lethal weapon?”
Just then I heard Ellie’s front door open and a male voice said, “Is that little Abby Cooper?”
I turned and my jaw dropped. Ellie’s older and astonishingly gorgeous brother Duffy stood on her front porch with a huge grin and his arms full of beer. “Yeah,” Ellie said as she pulled my bag from her trunk. “And she’s talking about shooting you.”
“Already? Gee, that was quick. Even for me,” he said, his grin widening as he handed off the beer to someone behind him and came marching down the steps.
As he closed in I regained my composure—a little—and smoothed out my hair. I’d known Duffy since before I could remember, and I’d had a crush on him for equally long. When I had visited here three years earlier, Duffy had been away on an oil rig in Kuwait, making oodles of cash and dodging bullets as he worked to restore the oil flow to a country ravaged by Saddam Hussein. I hadn’t seen him since I was seventeen and he was twenty-one, and I never remembered him looking this good. “Hey, Duff,” I said as he wrapped me in his arms and gave me a squeeze that made breathing difficult.
“Abster!” he exclaimed as he hugged me. “Jesus, what’s it been—fifteen years?”
“Give or take,” I said when he set me down and I had a chance to look him over. Duffy McGinnis was in the neighborhood of six feet with thick gorgeous brown hair that had a hint of curl at the ends. His eyes were dark brown and, like his sister, his skin was olive toned. He had ridiculously broad shoulders and an itty-bitty waist with, from what I remembered, one of the best asses ever to fill out a pair of Levi’s. His build was much thicker than I remembered, and his sweater bulged in all the right places. “You been workin’ out?” I asked, reaching up to squeeze a bicep.
Duffy flexed and gave Ellie a wink. “See?” he said to her. “Women like muscles.”
“Do not encourage him, Abby. He spends way too much time in the gym as it is.”
“She’s only mad ’cause I’m draggin’ Eddie with me,” he said as he put his big arm across my shoulders and took my bag away from Ellie. “Come on, gals, we got a whole roomful of people dyin’ to meet the psychic.”
I gave Ellie a sideways glance. “El…” I moaned.
“I may have let it slip to a few of my friends, but I swear if anyone bothers you I will personally set them straight.”
I was always a little apprehensive to meet people in a social situation who knew what I did for a living. What can I say? A lifetime of being seen as “different,” and subsequently ostracized, had me slightly sensitive.
Ellie and her family, in fact, were just about the only people who had never made much fuss about my abilities. Ellie’s
mother, Nina, had sat me down when I was seven for a heart-to-heart talk. “Abby,” she’d said, “you know not many people can appreciate it when someone like you comes into the mix. But I want you to know that we understand how special, bright and gifted you are. If you ever want to come over and hear how much we love you and your gifts, you just knock on my door. Okay?”
I never forgot Mrs. McGinnis’s kindness, or the warmth that the entire family always had for me.
Duffy walked me up the front stairs and into Ellie’s condo, setting my bag by the stairs, and, turning with me still in the crook of his arm, he announced to an entire roomful of strangers, “Hey, everyone, this is Abby Cooper. Abby, this is everyone.”
I gulped and waved shyly to all the pairs of eyes on me, and everyone in the room waved back.
“Come on, Abby,” Ellie said. “I’ll introduce you around. Duff, we’ll be ready to eat anytime the burgers are done.”
“Give me ten more minutes, El,” Duffy said as he let go of me and headed out toward the back of the condo.
“Duffy looks good,” I said casually as Ellie took my hand and began to lead me into her living room.
“Yes, and he’s single again,” she said with a sideways glance.
“What happened to Rachel?”
“Dumped him, just like you said she would in that reading you gave me a year ago.”
“Oh, yeah! I remember a little bit of that reading. Wow, I know you said he was really into her. What happened?”
“Do you remember telling me that something to do with travel was going to come between Duffy and his girlfriend?” I didn’t, but for the sake of argument I nodded my head. “She cheated on him with a pilot,” Ellie said.
“Get out!” I said, surprised at the connection.
“It was awful, Abby. She and Duffy were living together at the time, and we think he was even working up the nerve to pop the question.”
“How’d he find out?”
“My mother saw Rachel and some guy in a pilot’s uniform doing the lip-lock at a restaurant and told Duffy. He had Rachel’s stuff moved out onto the lawn by the time she got home.”
“He always was a man of action,” I said, looking through the kitchen to the outside, where Duff stood with a group of guys around a grill.
“Did you know he’s a sheriff now?”
“What? Getting shot at in Kuwait wasn’t high-risk enough for him?”
Ellie chuckled. “I know. I swear he’s going to give Mom a heart attack one of these days.”
“Where is your mom?” I asked, looking around the room.
“She and Daddy are at the club. They wanted to have breakfast with us in the morning. Mom especially can’t wait to see you.”
I smiled and was about to comment when someone next to me said, “Well, don’t hog her, Ellie! Let everyone else get a chance to say hello.”
I turned and looked at a very pretty redhead a little taller than Ellie offering a plate of hors d’oeuvres to me. “Hello,” I said, taking the plate. “Are these for me?”
“Yes, Ellie made them, and they’re delicious. I’m Sara, one of the bridesmaids. I hear you’ve come to save the day so that we don’t have an extra grooms-man.”
“And thank God for that!” Ellie exclaimed. “I swear, when I catch up with Gina I am going to wring her skinny little neck!”
“What’s the scoop with Gina, anyway?” I asked.
“She took off after her ex-boyfriend,” Sara said.
“So out of character for her too. And even though I’m pissed that she chose this time to do it, I’m secretly proud of her, because this isn’t something Gina would normally do,” Ellie commented.
“Gina’s boyfriend moved to California about two months ago,” Sara explained. “He asked her to go, but she said no. Gina’s sort of into her career right now. Anyhoo, he sends her flowers for a couple of weeks, calls her on the phone a bunch and keeps asking her to quit her job already and come out there. Then one day the flowers stop coming and the phone calls dwindle to nothing, and Gina decides she can’t live without him. So Kelly—uh, that’s Kelly over there,” Sara said, pointing to a petite brunette by the fire-place, “gets this call late at night last week and it’s Gina. She’s boarding a plane and headed to California, and she’s not sure when or even if she’ll be back.”
“Wow,” I said. “That does take guts. I hope they end up working it out.”
“Still, it would have been nice if she’d waited until after the wedding,” Ellie said. “She’s one of my best friends, and I can’t believe she’s going to miss my big day.”
“She’ll be there in spirit, honey,” Sara said, and something about the way she said it sent big alarm bells clanging through my head.
I turned my head slightly to try to focus on the message coming in through my intuition, but just then Duffy announced from the back porch, “Dinner’s ready!” and Ellie grabbed my hand. “Come on, Abby. You can sit next to me. Eddie won’t be here until late—his shift doesn’t end till nine, and I’ll be lonely. You can keep me company.”
“Cool,” I said as we headed over to the sliding glass door. “We’re eating outside?” I asked, seeing a huge picnic table out back with table settings and dishes.
“Don’t worry; it’s still pretty warm out, and we have a couple of heaters placed around the picnic table. Trust me, with your coat on you won’t be cold.”
Luckily, Ellie was right, and after everyone was seated she introduced me around the table. I nodded to every new face, concentrating on committing their names to memory. There were only three other bridesmaids besides myself, and with relief I noticed that they had easy names: Kelly, Sara and Christina, each smiling at me as Ellie said her name.
After the introductions were made, we all piled our plates with food and listened to Duffy, who was sitting on the other side of me while he entertained everyone with wild stories about our childhood. He talked about things I’d completely forgotten about, like my getting stuck on the roof after Duff had dared me to climb out a window and then locked it behind me the moment I turned around. Or the time he fell out of the tree house in a neighbor’s yard and broke his arm. He made a point to let everyone know that “little Abby Cooper was the one who ran and got my mom—even though Abby hadn’t been anywhere near me when I fell. She had no way of knowing that I’d broken my arm, but she was the first one to raise the alarm.”
He was right. I remembered being three houses down in Brittany Johns’s basement playing a game of Sorry! with her and Ellie when I’d suddenly bolted to my feet and announced, “Ellie! Your brother’s hurt!” It was shortly after that incident, in fact, that Mrs. McGinnis had given me the speech about being special.
After dinner we all helped with the plates and dishes, and Ellie got busy in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on dessert. I had a chance then to take a little tour of her condo, which I remembered she and Eddie had purchased the year before.
I wandered to the stairs and looked up the hallway. A gallery of framed photographs lined most of the entire wall leading to the upstairs. I found myself taking a slow tour up the steps looking at the photos of Ellie, Duff, her parents and all of Ellie’s friends. There were a few of the two of us when we were little, and this made me smile.
About three-quarters of the way up the stairs I paused at a photo of Ellie and another beautiful blonde. The photo seemed recent—it captured Ellie’s current hairstyle, and it caught me off guard because the image of the woman in the photo next to Ellie appeared flat and one-dimensional. That’s my way of knowing someone has crossed over. Whenever I see a photo of someone who has died, they appear almost flat next to others who are still alive. I searched the other photos and found the same woman in one with Ellie and a group of friends on a ski trip that I’d heard about. If I remembered correctly, the photo was taken just this past Christmas.
I scanned my memory banks. Ellie and I talked on the phone about once every few months and e-mailed each other at least once e
very couple of weeks. I couldn’t remember her talking about having a girlfriend pass away.
“There you are,” I heard from the bottom of the stairs.
I turned and smiled at Duffy.
“Ellie’s almost ready with the dessert. You want some?”
“Sure. Hey, Duff?” I said, turning back toward the picture.
“Yeah?” he said, coming up a few stairs.
“Who’s this friend of Ellie’s who died?”
Duffy cocked his head and gave me a funny look, then looked to where I pointed and said, “Aw, that’s Gina, our runaway bridesmaid. Did someone tell you she died? ’Cause I’m sure Ellie’s gonna kill her when she gets back into town for missing the big event.”
I sucked in a breath. “This is Gina?” I asked in a hushed voice.
“Yeah. Cute, isn’t she?”
I sat down on the stair and stared up at the photo, willing the image to change, to grow in thickness and take on the same vibrancy of the other images in the photo. “Oh, God…” I said.
“Abby, you okay?” Duffy said, coming the rest of the way up the stairs and squatting down in front of me, a concerned look on his face.
“Duff…” I said, my eyes pleading. “Oh, God, Duff…”
“Abby, talk to me,” he said, stroking my arm. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s Gina…she’s not…she’s…”
“Hey, guys!” Ellie said from the bottom of the stairs. “Come on, dessert’s on the…Abby? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said quickly. “I think it’s just the altitude or something. Maybe I just need some air. Duffy, will you help me outside?”
“Sure,” Duffy said, locking eyes with me. “Ellie, don’t wait for us. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Can I do anything?” Ellie said as we came down the stairs, me leaning on Duffy and looking anywhere but at her.