“Not everyone gets a happy ending in real life,” Jane replies.
“Well, Emmy and Graham are,” Babs retorts, clearly miffed that Jane isn’t buying into her happy-ending love affair. “Freddy and I had a wonderful marriage, and he was taken too soon. The same for your gran.”
Jane’s face tightens. Number one, this is a total shock to her, and number two, she’s been down on love ever since her boyfriend dumped her.
“Then there was the guy, remember, darling?” Graham says, ignoring Jane much better than I am. “Fake Clint, your little nickname for him. He tried to hit on you, and I was jealous, and then you got between us and yanked me into the room like a wild woman. I wouldn’t have hurt him too bad. I don’t want to go to prison, after all. What was that word you used? ‘Carnage’？ Yes. You didn’t want me to create carnage.”
“You are the jealous type,” I reply sweetly.
“It sounds weird to me,” Jane says, her eyes darting from me to Graham. “Almost as if you’re making it up on the spot. Also, I don’t see how she’d had a crush on you for years when she doesn’t follow sports. Totally not her style.”
Graham blinks. “Believe it or not, truth is stranger than fiction. Someone stole my Lamborghini—”
“Which was fine, because you didn’t need that car,” I say, interrupting him. “It’s a gas guzzler and entirely too expensive. Do you know what other things you could do with that kind of money?”
Graham’s hand slides under my hair to the nape of my neck as he brushes his fingers over my skin. “Oh, but I didn’t care. I just love beautiful things.” He presses his nose to my hair. “Like you,” he whispers.
I swallow.
“So you were there when Kian tracked her phone to the motel?” Andrew asks Graham.
Graham turns to my brother. “Yes. I drove her to the airport.”
“But your car was stolen . . . ,” Andrew says.
I roll my eyes. “What he meant was he called an Uber and rode with me. I mean, it was the plan all along for me to fly home.”
Andrew seems to accept our story as he grasps Graham’s hand and pumps it, then proceeds to tell him how he was thrilled when Graham got traded to New York.
Jane feeds Londyn a bite of mac and cheese. Londyn, who’s been darting her eyes from one person to the next and is probably understanding all of it because she’s a little genius, grabs the spoon to do it herself, smearing pasta all over her face.
I laugh at her, and she grins and slaps the high chair.
But Jane isn’t distracted. “So basically, you reconnected in Vegas, then went to a random motel in the desert, had an argument with some man named Clint, and now you’re engaged? Sorry. It’s nice to meet you, Graham, but Emmy, this is not normal for you.”
Andrews makes a humming noise. “Emmy can be odd.”
“What? Give me an example,” I say. “And remember, I’ve seen you bite your own toenails as a toddler.”
“Gross,” Babs says as she makes a gagging noise. “I can find you a self-help book for that.”
“I don’t do it now!” He points at me. “Emmy only eats broccoli when it’s flat. You smash it with your fork until it’s like a pancake, then stick it in your mouth. Same for cauliflower and potatoes. It takes you an hour to eat.”
“They tickle the top of my mouth,” I say as I nudge my head at Jane. “Jane puts pepper on her ice cream.” I direct my eyes at Andrew. “I have a list of weird stuff you did as a kid, so shut it.”
“Like what?” he asks.
Jane smirks. “Oh, you’ve done it now, Tiny. Ma never forgets.”
“For one, you ate toilet paper like it was chocolate.”
“It was clean, at least,” he mutters.
“Two, you also ate Bubbles the goldfish. You put your little hand in the fishbowl and gulped him down before I could stop you.”
Jane gasps. “You told me Bubbles was different because he lost weight!”
I sigh. “No, I just bought a new fish for you, Jane.”
She shakes her head. “And you never told me?”
“Sorry. I replaced Bubbles every three months like clockwork because Andrew was addicted to eating raw fish. Shall I continue? There’s the time you stripped down and ran around naked in the children’s section of the store—”
He holds his hand up. “All right. I’ve heard enough. You are completely normal. Cross my heart.”