And Gabe hung back against the wall and observed as Mrs. Clapper, the gregarious sixth grade geometry teacher, strolled across the stage with a microphone. She was great at getting the crowd lathered up to buy raffle tickets, and it was usually pretty fun to watch, a bit like witnessing Ruth Bader Ginsburg doing Vanna White’s job. Every donation featured a little display of some kind—a poster, a dressmaker’s dummy, that sort of thing—for illustrative purposes, and because it was free advertising for local businesses.
She stopped in front of a glossy placard featuring a photo of laughing party guests pulling meat off skewers with their teeth.
“And from Truck Donegal, we have—a catered event fortwenty! Wow, this is a deal! Whether it’s a baby shower? Gender reveal? Funeral? You can count on Truck to be there!”
Laughter erupted from the audience.
Truck looked uncertain about why this was funny, but he decided to smile. It was pretty universally accepted in Hellcat Canyon that his chicken satay was indeed out of this world.
Mrs. Clapper next strolled over to a dress form bedecked in a beguiling, silky, flowing tent of a dress. She grasped one corner of it and swept it up and out with a flourish.
“Next we have—from Kayla Benoit of Kayla Benoit’s Boutique—The Whatever Comes First Package—a wedding dress or a five-piece maternity wardrobe! I know a lot of mamas-to-be out there who would be absolutely lovely in both. If you have a mama or a bride-to-be in your life, you’re going to want to buy a lot of tickets now, aren’t you?”
Plenty of whoops for Kayla, who was sitting next to Truck, much to Casey Carson’s angst. Casey was sitting with Eden and Annelise and Avalon and Mac.
Annelise Harwood, in a pink dress featuring sparkles at the sleeves for the occasion, was literally bouncing up and down on the edge of her seat, swinging her legs and scanning the stage, her face alight with joyous expectation. Eden sat next to her, a few strategic soft spirals spilling from her piled up hair, her spine rigid. Gabe went breathless. She looked beautiful. Also, tense as a board.
Mrs. Clapper strolled next to a lavishly floral trifold board with Eden’s Garden logo across the top and a photo of a delighted woman, hands clapped to her face, mouth opened in an O, receiving a bouquet of flowers from a beaming delivery person.
“‘From Eden’s Garden,’” Mrs. Clapper read from her little cards. “‘The I Love You–I’m Sorry–Congratulations! package—a dozen roses sent to three people of your choice!’ You just have to use it inside a year! Holy smokes, Eden, that is one fantastic prize. Everyone wants to say those things to someone throughout the year, am I right? What a classy way to do it!”
Happy applause indicated approval, and Eden nodded in acknowledgment.
“Moving on—from the Misty Cat Tavern—a year’s free pass to all special events! And for those of you who attended the Jasper Townes Black & Blue show recently, you know howamazingthis prize is! Thanks to Glenn and Sherrie Harwood, the two of you are fabulous.”
Lot of hooting here, for Sherrie and Glenn and the Misty Cat and Blue Room equally, probably, which made Gabe grit his teeth.
Because there was an empty place on the stage where a prize should be.
And that empty spot might as well have been spotlighted. Because everyone who had bought a ticket knew that somethingbelongedthere, and something clearlywasn’tthere. And a lot of them knew that whatever belonged there was donated by Annelise Harwood.
And as Beth Clapper, geometry teacher extraordinaire, strolled down the line of raffle prizes, working her way skillfully and cheerfully through all of them, getting closer and closer to that empty spot, a little more of the bouncy exuberance and light went out of Annelise.
Until she was utterly still.
A condition completely unnatural for her.
Gabe swore viciously under his breath. He knew definitively that the promised guitar suddenly wasn’t going to materialize on the stage. Showman or not, Townes wasn’t going to burst through the double doors of the auditorium when he was due to go onstage in about ten minutes at a stadium almost two hours away.
That fucker had welched.
Jasper Townes had flaked.
If it looked like a duck and walked like a duck, Gabe thought grimly, it would fuck you over like a duck.
He felt zero satisfaction. Something glacial and jagged seemed to have lodged itself in his sternum. He sicced his mind on the problem like a junkyard dog.
Gabe glanced at his phone. Five minutes to eight o’clock.
He silently consigned Jasper Townes to hell.
Although hell would have to wait. Right now Townes was probably getting a preshow massage, gargling with pearls and champagne or something.
Then he’d strut out onto a stage in front of a sea of ecstatic, screaming fans and make noise while his image was projected twenty feet high behind him in case someone at the tippy top of the stadium missed seeing the sweat beading on his lip as he sang.
While a bewildered little girl waited for him to show up with his guitar, and shrank in her seat, and the light in her dimmed, and bore the kind of humiliation she likely would never forget.
A desperate fury made him feel hollow.