Chapter 13: The Guest List

I read the invitation on my phone three times.

The third time I stopped on the last line.

*All of Kira's friends and family will be there.*

"I don't have eighty friends and family," I said.

"I know," Greg said.

"She does. That's the point of it."

I sat up in bed with the sheet held to my chest.

My whole body still hummed from the night.

The hum died the moment I thought of my front door, where that pink invitation was taped up for the whole street to read.

"We can call the police," Greg said. "Garner put tape on your door. It's a nuisance report at best."

"No."

"Kira."

"She wants eighty people in my yard watching me," I said. "Fine. She can have eighty people."

He looked at me for a while.

Then he nodded slowly, and the corner of his mouth moved.

"Tell me where to stand," he said.

"Behind me, until I say."

"And then?"

"Then not behind me."

He kissed my shoulder and went to find his shirt.

Rhonda was waiting at the bottom of the back stairs with Tilly in the stroller and a travel mug in her hand.

She had already taken a photo of the invitation on my door, three angles, with the date stamp showing.

"Evidence," she said. "I've been collecting it for two years. Hold your head up. You look like a woman who got what she needed."

I touched my hair and said nothing.

Greg carried the stroller up the stairs for me and did not look at either of us, and his ears were red.

At nine, a white minivan pulled up and parked across my driveway.

Garner's mother got out of it.