“Sure, and I will. Oh, I forgot about the cake decorating.” Hope looked at their mother.
“But we never miss a week.” Millicent Lawrence looked annoyed. “I’ll go and see the ladies, then come back.”
“Cake decorating?” Ryan asked, watching his mother stomp away. Millicent Lawrence never just walked.
“Come on. We can drop in and tell them we’re not going to go, and you can catch up with the book club.”
“Wait, what?” He didn’t move. “I don’t want to catch up with the book club. Those guys are fierce, from what I remember. And what did Newman mean about an upcoming visit?”
“Never mind about that.” Hope waved his words away. “We’ll talk soon.”
“You perform in front of thousands, and a handful of women scare you,” Newman teased. He then grabbed Hope and hugged her again.
“Are you actually learning to decorate cakes?” he asked Hope when Newman released her. “What the hell has happened to you?”
“It’s called broadening the mind,” Hope said.
“No, reading the complete works of William Shakespeare is broadening your mind. Cake decorating…. Well, it’s not something I thought you’d be into.”
“That’s very judgmental of you,” Hope snapped. “I want to decorate my child’s cakes.”
“You can pay for that to be done.”
“Shut up,” she muttered, snuggling into her man, which was cute and nauseating at the same time. “Go get Mom. She’ll be there for hours if you don’t.”
He hesitated.
“Oh, for pity’s sake. Just poke your head in the door and tell her we’re leaving in five. It can’t be that hard.”
“If it isn’t that hard, you do it.”
“I’m pregnant and tired.” She shooed him away.
He moved because she was pregnant and probably exhausted, and because the other men were all watching him. He wasn’t the boy who’d left here. He was a man now; he could put his head in a door and get his mother.
“Just take a deep breath,” Noah said as he passed him and the others.
“They haven’t stripped a man butt naked and slathered icing over him for at least a month,” Cubby added.
“I’ll bring around that shirt for you to sign, Ryan,” the Texan said.
Ryan ignored them and headed for what used to be Mrs. C’s old lair. Opening the door, he stepped into his worst nightmare. Women, at least ten of them, and mostly Lake Howling book club members, were all inside gossiping. As a teenager he’d have run a mile rather than face something like this.
“Is she experiencing any back pain?” Dr. McBride senior was saying. Still beautiful eleven years on, she saw him and smiled.
“No,” his mother said. She never used two words when one would do.
“No contractions?” This came from HRH, Henrietta Roberts Haigh, who was the closet person to a friend his mother had.
“She’s not had any yet, Henrietta. I’ve been with her all day,” his mother said.
The chairs were placed in rows, and up at the front was a table behind which a pretty blonde-haired woman seemed to be setting things up.
“Well, my guess is it won’t be long,” HRH decreed.
“Hello, I’m Branna McBride. I don’t think we really knew each other very well when I lived here.” A pretty dark-haired woman who was married to Jake rose from her chair, because to his surprise, everyone else in the room was ignoring him.
“I remember you from school. We sang in the band together, and you had a great voice.”