“Two years. Your turn. Tell me about the mistake.”
How to characterize David? “He started as a program manager for the foundation. It’s a part-time position that runs for a specific duration and gives people exposure to the behind-the-scenes workings of a foundation, and a chance to network. He was bright, ambitious, outgoing, with a real gift for connecting with people. He wanted to run for office, make a difference. The Senator knows everyone, and I mean everyone, in Washington and appreciates ambition, so when David came on board, they got on like a house on fire. Suddenly he was at the office full-time, going to meetings with the Senator, coming over for dinner for strategy sessions. I liked him. He was charming. Easy to be with. He always had something to say.
“I’m not sure how we started dating. I think I needed a plus one for a banquet or something, and they’re not my favorite way to spend an evening. He made them easier. After that we just . . . I don’t know. We’d get dinner, or see a play on the weekends. He was just there.” At work, at home, in her bed.
“What happened?”
Alana got out her phone, logged in to the restaurant’s wireless, and went to YouTube. “That’s my sister’s engagement,” she said, and offered the phone to Lucas.
His dark hair gleamed in the low light as he watched Freddie’s big moment play out on a stage at Wembley Stadium in London. Toby’s band had just finished the last encore when he called Freddie out onstage. She wore fitted jeans, a pair of Chanel ballet flats so old they were clearly vintage, and a button-down shirt Alana remembered from high school, and she was clearly, beautifully stunned. Flashbulbs were going off all over the stadium as Toby went down on one knee, opened a ring box, and asked Freddie to marry him. According to the tabloids, people two miles away could hear the cheer that went up when she said yes.
“Freddie Wentworth is your sister?” Lucas said. “You never said anything.”
“I’m a little fanatical about her privacy, and my own.” Alana retrieved her phone. “And this was my proposal.”
The scene was vastly different, a political fund-raiser given in Chicago for a presidential candidate on the campaign trail. The Senator and her mother had arranged for Paul Simon to play. At the end of the set, David, who was acting as the emcee for the night, called her up onstage. Mildly bewildered, she went, but the other shoe dropped only after she was in the spotlight. The rest of it seemed to happen in slow motion. She didn’t need to see the video to know what was happening. The memory was burned in her brain, and the reaction of anyone watching spelled out the whole humiliating incident, moment by moment.
On screen, David proposed.
Lucas’s eyebrows lifted slightly.
In the video, Alana shook her head frantically.
Lucas winced.
Silence fell in the room. A nervous laugh and some coughing before the singer, in an act of generosity Alana would remember for the rest of her life, said something that deflected the audience’s attention, causing the lighting person to switch the spotlight back to him.
“Ouch,” Lucas said.
Alana remembered the moments backstage not with her brain but with her body. The way she’d been shaking, fury and humiliation burning David’s cheeks and eyes. Her mother’s utter disbelief. Her own fury rising when she realized her mother and David had cooked it up together.
The next day the librarian LISTSERV she belonged to contained a post about the contract job in Walkers Ford. Her family had fought her departure, but she’d stood her ground.
“I’ll quit,” she’d said. “I can either keep working for you from Walkers Ford, or I will quit and do this on my own.”
“You don’t know what you want,” her mother had said impatiently. “You never have, so don’t be ridiculous. David is perfectly suited for you.”
In that moment, one single thought had surfaced in her brain. She’d never known what she wanted. That had to change. Now. She’d just chosen to set her own desires aside for the greater good of the family; the foundation; in some ways, the world. But knowing her mother thought she wanted, or deserved, a pale substitute of Freddie’s international moment burned like acid in her throat.
“I didn’t mean to humiliate him,” Alana said hastily. “I really didn’t. But I wasn’t ready for that. We’d been dating for a few months, and I had a good time with him, but I had no idea he was thinking about getting married. I certainly wasn’t thinking about getting married.”
“I got that, yeah,” Lucas said.