“No, it's still happening. I'm not sure Preston and I are going this year. We saw everyone at the wedding.”
“Have you told your parents yet?” Ivy's parents didn't agree on much, but they both believed family came first. She hadn't witnessed it, but she'd heard about their reaction the year Ivy's brother, Ted, skipped it.
“Yep, I told them last week.”
“And the world didn't end?” For the first time all night, Tory wasn’t thinking about Duncan.
Ivy laughed. “Hard to believe, I know. They weren't thrilled, but they seemed to understand. Although, of course, it might have helped they learned Madeline is pregnant the same day.”
“I guess it wasn't a lucky accident that you told your parents the same day your brother shared his news?”
“You know me so well. Ted called me before our parents.”
Ivy's statement didn't surprise her. Maybe it was because they were twins, but Ted and Ivy were close and always had been. Even when Preston proposed, Ivy called her brother, followed by Tory, before her parents.
“How are things going for you?” Ivy asked, making the conversation about Tory instead.
“Work is great, and I'm almost done with my Christmas shopping. I also have some ideas about how I want to decorate the condo.”
“Well, that's great, but not where I was going with my question.”
Yeah, I know that.
“How are things going with Duncan?”
“They're not. We haven't spoken since last Saturday.”
“Oh.” Silence followed the one-word reply, but it wouldn't last, not with Ivy on the other end of the line.
“What happened?”
“Either I overreacted, or Duncan falls into the same category as Grant and Luke.”
Tory filled Ivy in on everything while she prepared her tea. And in true Ivy fashion, she freely gave her opinion of Grant and where he should shove his thoughts. It really was too bad Grant was Preston’s cousin.
“What do you think?” Tory asked when she finished.
Maybe Ivy could provide some insight into the matter. However, it might not matter anyway. If she'd been right about Duncan, she wanted nothing to do with him. And if she'd made a mistake, he might be unwilling to forgive her. If the latter was the case, she couldn't blame him. No one appreciated being accused of something untrue.
“Honestly, Duncan didn't seem like the type to use someone like that, but I spent little time with him. Some people are good at hiding their true intentions.”
“You're not being very helpful.” Truthfully, she wasn't being helpful at all.
“You didn't let me finish.”
“Sorry, I'm listening,” Tory said before sipping her tea.
“It is possible you're 100 percent right about him. He might have planned from the beginning to manipulate things so you'd stay together after the wedding.”
When they'd spent time together, it never felt as if Duncan was steering their relationship in a particular direction. But the best manipulators kept their victims in the dark.
“It seems like a stretch to me,” Ivy continued. “But what I think, or anyone else, doesn’t matter. You need to decide. Maybe you should try writing everything down.”
She always found it helpful to write things down when she had a problem. And she would’ve thought to do it already if she hadn’t been so focused on not thinking about Duncan.
When no paper turned up in the kitchen drawers, Tory carried her tea into her office.
“How do you think I should organize it?” she asked, turning on the desk lamp. A traditional pros and cons list didn’t fit the situation.