living area. “I see you went with Vendela roses? I’ve always found them a bit fussy, but they do like to show out.”
Melanie had no clue what kind of roses they were. She couldn’t care less as long as they lasted through the party.
Her mother turned, her features settling into something Melanie knew well. Disapproval. “Is there something I can lend a hand with? I arrived early in case you needed some assistance.”
Melanie shook her head. “No. I have it all under control. Is Hillary coming tonight?”
She had called her sister earlier in the week, and Hillary had sounded stronger. She’d said that she would come to the party if at all possible. Melanie’s spirits had been lifted just thinking about Hillary getting out of the house and trying to join the land of the living. She stayed in far too much.
Her mother’s expression shuttered. “Your sister doesn’t enjoy social events, and today wasn’t a good day for her. She sends her best wishes, of course.”
Of course.
Melanie’s older sister lived with Anne in a tasteful town house in the middle of the Spring Lake subdivision. Hillary had once owned a successful salon in Baton Rouge, parlaying her skills as a stylist into a lucrative business, but after their father’s death and her divorce a year after, her struggle with both anorexia and bulimia—two diseases Hillary had thought she’d beaten back in college—had come roaring back. Eventually Hillary had moved in with her mother and seemed to have given herself over to the diseases, hiding herself even more, selling the salon her business partner had kept afloat for years. The constant binge and purge had taken its toll on her body, and in the past months, Hillary looked worse than she ever had, dwindling down to a mere eighty-eight pounds, making people wince when they looked into her now-hollow eyes.
Her sister’s refusal to get help, and her mother’s dismissal of the subject, broke Melanie’s heart. She felt tears prick at her eyes, something that happened all too often these days when she thought about her sister.
But she didn’t have that luxury at the moment, nor did she want to examine too closely the feelings she had about her mother and how Anne had contributed to Hillary’s lack of mental well-being. Her mother had spent a lifetime making passive-aggressive comments about Hillary’s adolescent chubbiness, sending her to “healthy living” camps each summer and buying oversize clothing to hide her “little rolls that no one wanted to see.”
The doorbell rang.
“That must be the caterer. Finally,” Melanie said, hurrying to the side door. Standing on the doorstep were several workers dressed in black chef jackets emblazoned with Gloria Jay’s. “Come on in. I thought you had gotten lost. You were supposed to be here forty minutes ago.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” one of the women, sporting a nose ring, no less, said. Anne would probably say something to the woman. “There was a tanker turned over on I-49 that had traffic at a standstill.”
“Oh well, that makes sense. Come in, and I’ll show you where I want everything placed.”
Ten minutes later, the caterers had put the heavy hors d’oeuvres in chafing dishes, sending the delectable smells of shrimp and grits, smoked oysters, and spicy jambalaya to compete with the scent of the “fussy” roses. Two staff members filled silver trays with bite-size smoked Gouda and crawfish toast points and mini-Natchitoches meat pies. The cuisine of Louisiana would be on display for Emma and Andrew’s guests this evening.
Kit emerged from upstairs, looking like a seasoned model for a fancy country-club brochure. He wore an open-throat linen shirt, navy sports coat, natty trousers, and leather driving moccasins. His hair was swept back from his high forehead, and those crinkly blue eyes looked prepared to charm. He dropped a surprise kiss onto her mother’s cheek, earning a light slap.
“Such a rogue. How do you manage him still, daughter?” Anne asked, her laughter like wind chimes, light and delightful. The diminutive Japanese woman adored being noticed by the opposite sex, especially one as nice looking as Kit. Her mother was, after all, a woman who enjoyed attention, negative or positive.
“I don’t. Kit manages himself.” Truer words had never been spoken.
“Andrew and his mother are here,” Emma said, trotting out the front door, a smile blooming on her face.
“Great,” Melanie deadpanned, straightening the napkins for the fourth time and eyeing the spot where the silver cake knife needed to go.
“Behave,” Kit said, dropping the same kiss he’d just given her mother onto