down inside, but the Minnesota girl’s fitness did not.
Richard appeared beside her. He was some kind of crisis PR manager from Wyndham, the kind of guy who would act all appalled at sexual harassment but be the first to laugh at a smutty joke.
“Kelvin said I had to give this to you.” He handed her an envelope with “Team Challenge” typed across the front. Lacey groaned.
Just when she’d thought the day couldn’t get any longer.
“Everyone get your food and gather round. We have a team challenge.” There was a collective groan, but within a few minutes, everyone had plates of food and were sitting in a circle around the smoldering fire.
Lacey held up the envelope with one hand while scooping up the bland stew with her fork. “Who wants to read it?”
“I will.” Louisa reached out from beside her and Lacey passed the envelope over.
Ripping open the end of the rectangle, Louisa fished out a piece of paper. “Getting to know each other.” She flipped the paper over. “There are three questions below. Each team member has to choose one question to ask another team member. Questions can only be asked twice, and every person has to answer a question. Points awarded for openness and vulnerability.”
Louisa looked up as almost everyone shifted uncomfortably. “The topics are biggest regret, first love, scariest moment. Should I start?”
Shrugs and mumbles of assent around the circle.
Louisa looked around the group. “Jen, scariest moment.”
Jen poked her dinner with a fork for a second, then placed her plate down on the ground. “When I was twelve years old, my dad got pulled over on a traffic stop. They said later that our car matched the description of a stolen vehicle, even though the plates were completely different. The truth was they were suspicious of a black man driving a nice car. He pulled over and placed his hands on the steering wheel. He told me to watch. That if anything happened, I needed to be able to tell people that he had his hands in view the entire time.”
Lacey’s gut dropped like a rock thrown into a pond.
Jen shifted her legs, pulling them into her body. No one said a word. Even the wildlife around them seemed to have frozen. “The next thing I know, there’s a cop pointing a gun in the window. I’m screaming. They’re asking for his license and registration, but when he moves his hand to get them the cop starts yelling and waving his gun and telling my dad to keep his hands where he can see them. I thought they were going to shoot him on the spot. That’s the scariest moment of my life.”
No one said a word. Or even breathed.
“What happened?” Louisa asked the question everyone was thinking.
“They got my dad out of the car, had him spread-eagled over the hood. Made me get the registration out of the glove compartment and his license out of his wallet. After they’d checked them, they just got in their car and drove away. No apology. No explanation. Nothing.”
Jen picked up her plate. “My dad sold his car and bought an older generic model. He’s Head of Pediatrics at Boston General, and he still refuses to own a car less than ten years old.”
Jen won. Jen won, and Lacey didn’t want to play this stupid game any more.
Nobody spoke until Jen looked up from her plate. “I think that makes it my turn.”
Louisa passed the piece of paper to Jen who didn’t even glance at it. “Lacey, first love?”
Any answer she could give to any question felt trite after what they’d just heard. Across the fire Jen gave her a nod, as if knowing what she was thinking.
She’d end up at the bottom of the scoring, but that was fine. She’d get her points another way. “I don’t have one.” It was true. She’d only been seventeen. Who even knew what love was at seventeen? The most that could be said was that she’d mistaken deep like for love. When she was seventeen. Not now. Now she would crawl over broken glass to have never met Damon or his two-faced parents.
Right, who to ask next. “Okay—”
“You’ve never been in love?” Cassie asked, incredulous. Like Lacey had said she didn’t believe in oxygen. Or martinis. Or the US Constitution.
“High school? College? There must have been someone. How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.”
“You can’t go thirty-two years and not have fallen in love at least once. Even if it was unrequited.” Louisa stuck her oar