Chapter 26
Besides, she wasfamily.
* * * *
It turned out Aunt Marlene was happy to hear from Tara, even after some twenty-odd years, and thought it would be great to see her again at Amanda’s wedding. Tara knew better than to ask outright if she could stay, though. Instead, she asked if there was a particular hotel the guests were encouraged to use, perhaps the one where the reception would be held? There wasn’t any contact information provided on the evite, but if Aunt Marlene could give her the phone number, she’d be happy to make her own reservations…
“Oh, nonsense, honey,” Aunt Marlene said with a laugh. “You can stay here at the house. We have plenty of room.”
The house, as if it were a genteel Southern mansion with wings full of rooms waiting to be filled with guests. But Tara didn’t argue—the invitation was exactly what she’d been angling for all along. Still…
“Well, only if you insist,” she protested. “I don’t want to get in the way or anything.”
Aunt Marlene snorted, a horsey sound Tara had forgotten all about from her childhood until she heard it loud and clear through the phone line all these years later. “Don’t be silly. Mandy’s going to need all her girls as the big day approaches. Are you just coming in for the wedding, or can you come down a little earlier, maybe? Stay a few days?”
“I wouldlike to see Wildwood again,” Tara admitted. “I have some time off from work coming up.”
“Great!” Aunt Marlene crowed, as if it were a done deal. “Are you sure your parents won’t make it? Or will you be bringing someone else along? A certain male friend, perhaps? I can find you two a private room, if you like.”
Tara rolled her eyes and tried not to sigh. Why was it that, as a woman aged, if she wasn’t in a committed relationship with man, everyone around her felt obligated to drop hints that she should be? If Tara didn’t need a vacation so badly, and hadn’t already talked herself into going to Wildwood for an extended weekend trip—Amanda’s wedding be damned—she would have loved to tell her aunt that the only male friends she had were gay. On top of that, hey, so was she. While she was at it, maybe she could ask if any of Amanda’s bridesmaids might be interested in a little cougar action to heat up the reception. If they all drank like her cousin did, Tara might get lucky after the wedding.
But no, she held her tongue, because she really needed a place to stay and she didn’t want to piss off her relatives. Her mother might not have spoken with Marlene in years, but if she came out to her aunt over the phone, she knew the moment she hung up, her mother would get a call out of the blue. “Do you know what your daughter just told me?” and all that crap. It would be freshman year of college all over again.
So she forced a laugh that sounded fake to her own ears and said, “Oh no, Aunt Marlene, it’ll only be me.”
“Well, you drive careful, you hear? It’s a long trip up here. And don’t wait so long between calls next time, honey,” Aunt Marlene told her. “We can’t wait to see you again.”
* * * *
When Tara was younger, the summer seemed to stretch like taffy, the wait between the end of the school year and the day they’d leave for Wildwood an indeterminable torture. Now she felt the same way again, June melting into July and the hours trickling by, pulling her from morning to night until she feared she might snap. The date of Amanda’s wedding was circled in red on her calendar, but it never seemed to get any closer.
Then July ended and, all of a sudden, time sped up. Now she had a million things to do at work; she was at the office late every evening, filing paperwork, completing forms, sending invoices, trying to get everything off her desk before she would be leaving. It didn’t help that other employees were also on vacation, leaving them short-staffed. She took on more than her usual heavy load, and they had seasonal help to train, as well, so there was all the extra HR paperwork involved with those workers, too. Add in the summer interns, who screwed up more than they helped, and Tara found herself running circles around the office all week long, from seven in the morning until well after the sun went down.