Been There Done That (Leffersbee #1) - Hope Ellis Page 0,128

sets of eyes on me.

It was a quilt. A quilt of pictures. Of me, my mother, her coworkers. Group shots of us with the entire Leffersbee, Payton, and Winston clans.

“We all picked our favorites,” Camille said, and the other women nodded along. “And Ellie Leffersee had so many. Zora raided her stash.”

My throat was dry. “Thank you. Thank you all so much.”

“See, I told you he would like it.” One of the women stuck her tongue out, childishly.

“I wasn’t arguing with you, Dorothy. I was just saying, he’s a man and he wouldn’t want any of that frilly shit you like.”

I laughed despite myself. I could easily imagine my mother right along with them. She’d have kept the smartass comments coming, raising the stakes by further instigating their mock conflict.

“One more thing,” Camille said. She was apparently the leader of the group, though I couldn’t help but wonder if it was by self-nomination.

The ladies passed another plastic bag down to me. I fished out a small box.

It was a jewelry box.

My nerves felt too raw and exposed to joke, but I gave it a try anyway. “Are one of you ladies proposing?”

“Open it.”

“Don’t act like you’re scared of it, open the gosh darn box!”

It was almost comical, seeing all of their craned necks and wide-eyed gazes trained on the box.

I eased the velvet box open.

And stopped breathing.

Camille got up and came around the table. She laid a hesitant hand on my shoulder. “You know what it is, then?”

I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

Out of the corner of my eye, another chair pushed back. I kept my gaze down, trained on the glossy wood table and away from the contents of the box, fighting for control. I fought desperately against the heat of sadness and loss in my throat.

A new hand settled on my arm.

“Lila planned on getting it for you. She was going to surprise you before you left for college. She had it pinned up on the wall and told us all about it. She was saving for it but then she . . . left the job. We talked again, got reconnected when she was back in Michigan. We didn’t talk a great deal more, but in one of the conversations, I remember her saying she’d meant to get you this, but it got lost in all the transitions. I know she’d have wanted you to finally have it.” Camille’s hand kept patting my shoulder.

“She was going to have it engraved,” another voice said. “We’d all teased her about it back then. But we didn’t forget.”

I shook my head, sniffing past the stinging sensation in my nose. “How did you all even do this? All these years later?”

“Wasn’t that hard. High school had the ring style from that year still on file. It wasn’t nothing for the company to fire up one with the right year. Money talks—you know that.”

A finger poked in my back. “What, are you trying to kill us with the suspense? Try it on!”

I reached into the box and retrieved the class ring. It bore my graduating year of high school on either side. The school’s name was neatly printed around the perimeter of the stone.

I angled the band and, sure enough, made out an inscription inside. After tilting it to take advantage of the overhead lighting, I was almost unmanned by the engraved words.

It was from one of our favorite Dr. Seuss books. My mother read it to me a million times. Never told me she was sick of reading it, never skipped pages.

Oh, the places you’ll go.

Her voice sounded in my head, repeating the familiar words.

Oh, Mom.

I gave it up, then, lowering my face to one hand, clenching the ring in the other.

A set of arms wrapped around my neck from behind, while that same hand kept patting me on the shoulder.

I shuddered, unable to hold back the emotion. I was gratified. Full. For the first time since arriving back in Green Valley, it wasn’t my mother’s absence I felt, but her presence.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Zora

One Month Later

“Zora! Right on time. Good to see you.”

“Peter.”

“Don’t just stand there. Come in, have a seat.”

I pushed off the doorway, walked into his office and pulled out a chair.

Please, I told the sick, anxious cramping that had started in my gut as soon as I’d gotten his email invite for this meeting today. Please stop, cease, go away.

Please let me have my dignity intact when I met this end. I can’t start this thing out