weeks. How’s the magic wedding spreadsheet?
Emelia: It’s now a spreadsheet and a Gantt chart
Lacey: You are a strange, strange woman.
Emelia: I have to have something to entertain me while Peter’s training. He’s away all week at a camp this week. I can’t wait until the World Champs are over.
Lacey: Okay. I’ve gotta go and clear some final things. Wish me luck!
Emelia: You don’t need luck. I pity your poor competitors. They’ll need all the help they can get.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Peter didn’t want a bachelor party or for him to give a speech. Best man in name only. He should be grateful he was the best man at all, but that hadn’t dulled the twinge when his brother’s text made it clear he wanted Victor to have nothing to do with anything that actually mattered.
Victor rubbed his hands over his face. Could he blame him after everything? If he’d been Peter, he wouldn’t want Victor giving a speech at his wedding. But Peter was the better man of the two of them. So he’d thought he might have a chance.
At least he knew now before he wasted his time trying to write something that wasn’t wanted or needed.
God, I don’t know how to fix things with my brother. Could you give us a hand at all?
His attempt at prayer was stilted. He’d first turned his mind to spiritual things in rehab. The twelve steps gave you no choice. Made it an entire step even.
He’d wrestled and refused to participate and tried to barter with the counsellor to let him skip it. But at the end of the day, he couldn’t get around the fact that living life only for himself had turned him into someone he didn’t like and hurt everyone he loved.
So here he was, with his awkward prayers and occasional church attendance, trying to figure out what his mother and Peter and Emelia had that seemed to give them a sense of purpose that had remained elusive to him his whole life.
Victor shifted in his seat. His knees were wedged up against the seat in front, his attempt to keep his body in the allocated space. Next to him, Lacey tapped furiously on her phone. He’d been stunned when she dropped into the seat next to his on the bus until he realized it was one of the few left, and two of them were next to people who took up one and a half seats.
She’d promptly proceeded to ignore him for the next hour and a half as she conducted warfare via text and email.
At least that had reminded him to tell his family he was disappearing for a week. Check his emails. Reply to the whole five that needed responses.
It felt like another life ago that he had been working fourteen-hour days, barely able to keep up with the accounts he was juggling. Once the scandal broke, the work had disappeared faster than figgy pudding at Christmas. Now he sat here, twiddling his thumbs while the woman next to him burned through work like it was kindling and she was kerosene. Thanks for nothing, Garrett.
He glanced down at her screen. The text seemed to go on and on. “Why don’t you just call them?”
Nothing.
“O’Connor?” Lacey seemed too informal, and Ms. O’Connor too stilted. So, since they were all sitting here in army fatigues headed off to boot camp, he figured he had might as go with that.
She glanced up from her phone. “Sorry, what?”
“Why don’t you just call them? Surely that would be easier than those novels you’re writing.”
Her eyes narrowed. “If by easier, you mean quicker, then sure. But if by easier, you mean ensuring that there is no confusion about what needs to be done while I’m away then, no. Now, I really need to get this done.” Her attention went back to her screen like they’d never spoken.
He watched the scenery roll by outside. He had no idea where they were or where they were going. He’d Googled Duluth, trying to find out if there was some kind of military-themed corporate boot camp nearby and came up dry. After the stunt last night, he wouldn’t put it past Meredith to have paid someone to create one just for them.
“What about voice to text?” Even as the words came out of his mouth, he knew they were a mistake.
Lacey’s face jerked up. “Oh, I don’t know. Could it be that I’m dealing with commercially sensitive information and I have no idea who half the people on