Chapter 20

On Saturday night, Sam and Red went to Junie’s place to help Junie and Manolo pick out wedding songs for their reception, along with Poppy, Heath, Mona and Rory.

“Should we start?” asked Junie, curled up in a chair with a pad and pencil.

“I thought Keval was coming,” replied Poppy.

“Keval is in Portland,” said Red.

“Keval’s been going to Portland a lot lately,” Poppy replied.

“Let’s do this,” said Red as she distributed sheets of paper from the stack in her arm. “I’ve compiled a list of the most popular wedding reception songs from the last twenty-five years. I even printed copies so that we could all be on the same page. No pun intended.”

Without commenting,Junie looked at her pad, then across the patio at Manolo.

“Now. What do we think of Stevie Wonder?” asked Red.

“Absolutely. Little Stevie, Big Stevie. The more Stevie, the better,” replied Poppy.

“Really?” Mona made a face. “That’s not very contemporary.”

“It’s a wedding,” argued Rory. “You need stuff that everybody knows, from your great aunt on down. Now’s not the time to be showing off how hip your taste in music is.”

“How about Michael Jackson?” asked Red. “He’s number five on the list.”

Rory raised his wineglass in agreement. “Now you’re talking. Got to have some Michael in there to get people dancing.”

“Is “I’m Too Sexy” on here?” frowned Heath from where he sat on a stone wall in his “Quantum Mechanic” T-shirt flipping through his pages.

Poppy leaned into him, smiled fondly and gave him a one-armed squeeze.

“It doesn’t have to be exclusively retro,” said Red. “The more contemporary numbers start on page—”

“Um, Red,” said Junie.

“Hm?” asked Red, licking her finger to make shuffling through the papers easier.

“Manny and I... we made up our own song list. We just wanted your help in narrowing it down.”

“Huh?” Red looked up, her fingers stilling as she saw Junie hold up her pad.

There was a pause. Around the patio, eyes fell in an effort to spare her humiliation. Poppy suddenly found a new fascination with Manolo’s intricate stonework and Heath, well Heath was just Heath, no doubt thinking deep thoughts about such things as the origins of the stars and all the lyrics to “I’m Too Sexy.”

Red swallowed. “Oh.”

“I appreciate you going to all this trouble. Really, I do. But if you’d just asked... we want to pick out our own songs.”

Red’s face grew hot.

“I’m sorry. I just thought...”

“It’s okay.” Junie got up, went to Red and laid a hand on her arm. “We’ll check this out after we’ve exhausted our list, won’t we, Manny?”

“Definitely.”

“Maybe there’s something here that we hadn’t thought of. In fact,” she said, flipping through the thick pile, “I’ll bet you anything that there is.”

* * * *

“I’m going in to get some more wine,” Manolo told Sam. “Want to give me a hand?”

“Sorry about that,” said Sam, when it was just the two of them. “Red means well.”

“Oh, hey. No apology needed, man.”

“She just wants everything to be the best it can be for your wedding. Sometimes she goes a little overboard.”

“I get it. Junie definitely picked the right person to be her maid of honor. From the moment Junie asked her, Red’s been right there in the trenches with her. To the point of even second-guessing Junie’s color scheme.”

Sam winced. “You didn’t grow up around here. You didn’t see what we saw. Red growing up in a home like a revolving door. When it came to men, well... her mom didn’t discriminate. Red was helpless to make it better. I think that’s why she became a therapist. She’s still trying to fix things.”

“How’s that square with this house Red’s so set on buying?”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked cautiously.

“I could tell you were bothered by it the other night at the consortium.”

“I wasn’t bothered.”

Manolo thumped his chest. “This is me, Manny, you’re talking to.”

Sam steeled himself. “The house is between me and Red.”

Manolo leaned on the bar. “You can talk to me about anything, man. Don’t you know that? When did I not have your back?”

Sam looked over his shoulder at the patio where the others were arguing animatedly for their song choices.

It would do him a world of good to get the house dilemma off his chest.

He sighed, his shoulders slumping. “The house Red wants is the house I grew up in.”

“I knew it.” Manolo stood to his full height, letting his hand fall on the bar with a smack. “Does she know?”

“No.” Sam rubbed his hand over his face.

“Why not? Why haven’t you told her?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? What are you hiding?”

“I don’t want her to have it.”

“You said you weren’t attached to it.”

“I’m not. I want to get rid of it. I want it gone. The sooner, the better.”

“Why so defensive? What exactly’s wrong with it?”

“Don’t make me explain. If no one important to me knows about it, then it can’t come between us. It doesn’t intrude on the good parts of my life.”

“A house is a house is a house.”

“Not this one.”

Manolo glanced furtively around Sam to the patio. “Keep it down. What is it about this place? It haunted or what?”

“You could say that. I was never happy there. Because of that, I kept it separate from the rest of my life. I didn’t plan to. It just kind of evolved that way, being that it’s so far away from town, from school, from my friends.”

“Well, it’s a moot point, isn’t it, being that belongs to your dad.”

“If he can’t go back to it, I can take control.”

“And what? You don’t want it. Sell it. Sell it to Red. Make her happy.”

“Except…”

Manolo’s face lit up as he pieced it together.

“Then you’d have to keep going there.”

“I won’t sell. Especially not to Red.”

“Then what? Just let it sit there and rot?”

“I don’t know yet. I keep thinking about how Dad almost burned it down. I half wish I hadn’t come along when I did.”

All his problems, up in smoke. He’d never have to go back in there again, to be faced with them.

“Well, you didn’t.”

Sam heard footsteps, and then the lively discussion on the patio grew louder as the door opened.

Red’s gaze traveled over a somber Manolo and Sam. Normally, they would be bantering, cutting each other up. “Thought you were bringing some more wine,” she said cautiously.

“Looking for a certain bottle,” said Manolo in his usual, devil-may-care voice, opening a cupboard.

She put her arm around Sam, sitting at the bar. “Hey,” she said, eyeing him up and down. “You okay?”

It didn’t take a therapist to see that something was off.

“Yeah. You?” In his empathy over her overstepping by bringing her own playlist, he found himself touching the small of her back in consolation.

“Sure.” As if to prove it to him, she managed a small smile.

“Go on back out. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Red regarded Manolo and him with suspicion, but left without saying anything more.

Sam watched her return to the patio and the noise.

“So. What’s your next move?” asked Manolo.

“I wish I knew,” Sam replied.

“Whatever it is, you got to come clean with her. It’s the honorable thing to do. If the situation were reversed, it’s what you’d be telling me, man.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

That made it even worse.

But this wasn’t some minor hang up, some problem that could be solved over beers with the guys. What Sam was dealing with had been his whole life. Now it was coming to a head.