Fay offered with a smile, a bag of chips in one hand, a bowl of taco dip in the other. “Make sure everyone gets a quarter cup of it and not one potato cube more.” When they all stared at her, her smile faded and she shifted. “What?”
“You made a joke,” Neil said. And she was dressed in real clothes—white shorts and a bright orange shirt.
Her fingers must have tightened on the bag because it made a crackling sound. “I have made jokes before.”
“Not lately.”
“What your brother is trying to say,” Gerry said, shooting him a for-the-love-of-God-be-quiet look, “is that we’re all glad you’re...feeling better.”
“No,” he said, helping himself to a cherry tomato from the vegetable tray on the table. “What I was trying to say was ‘What’s going on?’”
She blushed, her gaze on the dip as if she could see her future in the mix of sour cream and taco seasoning. “Nothing. I’m happy.” Now she glanced at the three of them. “Isn’t that what you all wanted?”
Gerry offered up a cheery smile that was so forced, Neil was surprised her face didn’t crack. “Of course it is. Now come on,” she added to Fay, smacking Neil’s hand as he went in for a cucumber slice, “let’s take these out to the food table.”
Neil shut the door behind them and hoped none of the guests decided it might be a good idea to come inside. Corner him. Force him into stilted, polite conversation. He’d had all the conversation he could take for the day.
And the picnic had only been going on for an hour.
His hands in his pockets, he peered out the window over the sink at the people milling around the yard. There were shouts as someone did an impressive—and what had to be a stinging—belly smack into the inground pool. The tables under a large canopy were filled, the bartender Gerry had hired kept busy at the makeshift bar, pouring wine, mixing cocktails and opening beer bottles. Teenagers shot hoops in the fenced-off court while a group of younger kids played street hockey on the paved rectangle behind the garden shed.
A car door slammed and he straightened, squinted at the two figures walking up the driveway. A man and woman. Not Bree. Not Maddie.
“‘Just a small get-together,’ she told me,” Neil muttered, remembering how Gerry had conned him into this picnic just yesterday morning. “‘To celebrate the Knights winning the Cup, so people can congratulate you in person.’ I hadn’t realized you two even knew this many people,” he said to Carl. “What’d she do? Put up flyers around town? Post an open invitation on her Facebook page?”
“She does love that Facebook.” Carl opened a package of hot dogs and added the links to the pile already assembled on a cookie sheet. “She did do her best to keep the guest list to a minimum. But you know how it is. Word spreads and suddenly people we haven’t spoken to in years are calling, asking if it’s okay if they drop by to see you while you’re in town.”
Neil snorted. “It’s not me they want to see. It’s the Cup.”
Each player on the championship team got the Stanley Cup for a day. For his day, Neil had the Cup brought to Shady Point. That morning he’d taken it to Shady Grove Memorial Hospital before attending a ceremony at City Hall in his honor. Now the Cup sat on a table in the corner of the huge deck, where people could see it up close, touch it, take pictures of it.
“It’s both,” Carl said. “Though we all know you’d rather be anywhere else but out there, posing for pictures and being fawned over.”
It made him nervous, having someone else knowing him that well. “The fawning’s not that bad.”
Carl laughed. “You’re doing a good thing,” he said, taking a tray of raw hamburgers and T-bone steaks out of the refrigerator, “letting Gerry throw you this party. Letting people see you and the Cup up close.” He clapped Neil on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, son. Your mother and I are proud of you.”
A damn lump formed in Neil’s throat. He didn’t know what to do. What to say. Luckily, Carl wasn’t the type for long, sentimental conversations. He squeezed Neil’s shoulder and then carried the meat outside, leaving the door open.
His adoptive father’s words meant a lot to Neil, more than he wanted to admit. But he couldn’t get hung up on what other people thought, couldn’t base