Page 37 of Gray Hair Don't Care
Eileen clapped her hands as another member of the catering staff entered the room with a tray of champagne flutes topped with mimosas. “Ladies. I’d like to get started if we can. The food is hot and it’s not going to be like that forever. Echo, why don’t you go through the buffet line first?”
Echo cued up, followed by her friends. Lucius’s mom and aunt went after them, then Eileen. At the very end were Genevieve and Lela. Lela filled her plate with all sorts of delectable brunch goodies—mini spinach quiche, roasted asparagus with a lemon butter sauce, breakfast potatoes, and a lovely fruit salad. They sat at a long table at one end of the room, with Lela seated between Lucius’s aunt and Eileen.
“Hosting your granddaughter’s wedding must be so much fun for you, Eileen,” Lela said.
“It is. Echo is an absolute peach. I love her to pieces.”
“Of course you do. She’s smart and beautiful, strong and independent. Of course, her parents had a lot to do with that.”
“More or less,” Eileen said. “I wasn’t always so sure Donovan would figure out his life. He’s got an awful lot of his dad in him.”
Lela struggled to swallow a bite of strawberry, so she slugged down her mimosa. “He’s working hard to make up for his past mistakes.”
“There’s only so much making up you can do.”
Lela didn’t have a chance to respond, as Genevieve stood and raised her champagne glass. “I’d like to propose a toast to my daughter, Echo. Darling, you are the most brilliant and beautiful person I have ever known. May you always be happy and feel loved.”
“To Echo,” Lela and the other women at the table said in chorus.
“As soon as everyone’s finished eating, we’ll get started with games,” Genevieve said.
A half hour later, they were all seated on the couches in the center of the room, with Genevieve and Eileen running the show. They ran through Genevieve’s carefully planned activities, Echo seemed embarrassed for much of it, but everyone enjoyed themselves. A few times, Lela spotted Eileen, looking wistfully at Echo. There was no question that she was the true golden child of this family, even if she didn’t seem to want it.
Lela offered to help Genevieve clean up after the festivities had died down and everyone else had left. She was picking up discarded pens and slips of paper when Genevieve asked a question. “You still have feelings for him, don’t you?”
“Wait. What?” Lela had been unprepared for the question. It had come completely out of left field.
“Donovan. You’re still in love with him. I knew it when we were in school. I see the same look on your face now.”
Lela was deeply surprised to hear this from Genevieve. If she’d figured it out, why hadn’t the actual object of her affection been able to see it? “I did have a crush on him in college. That’s true. But it went away when you two got engaged.” That last part was a lie, but she didn’t want Genevieve to feel bad about what was very muchnother problem.
“You weren’t gutted?”
Lela felt like Genevieve was trying to get a rise out of her. “It wasn’t a big deal. Everyone experiences unrequited love at least once in their life, right?”
“I suppose. There were plenty of guys who didn’t take to me like I hoped they would.”
“Plenty?”
“I got more than my fair share of inquiries.” She laughed quietly, and shook her head. “But most of them didn’t stick around.”
Lela could only look back on her life before Mark, when she’d wasted so much of her youth crushing on guys. Every time she got up the nerve to make her confession, she was struck down, and each of those instances pierced a hole in her heart. A few too many and she started to feel like a sieve. So she kept her feelings to herself. That was why she’d never told Donovan she was in love with him. “I’m sorry that happened.”
“You still haven’t owned up to Donovan, Lela.”
“Sure I did. I had a crush on him.”
“It was more than that. I’m pretty sure it broke up our marriage.”
That was a step too far for anyone to believe, especially Lela. “Excuse me? I wasn’t even in the picture. You guys were an ocean away.” Lela’s head was spinning. What in the hell was Genevieve implying? “If he had any feelings for me, I never knew about it. And if that’s true, why didn’t he reach out to me after you got divorced? I didn’t hear from him. Ever.”
“Because he’s a bloody fool? I don’t know the answer to that question.”
Lela was getting more than a little annoyed. Genevieve had everything anyone could ever want—beauty, brains, and by all accounts, more than enough money to be happy. She’d also had the guy Lela had wanted. “Donovan was in love with you. He always gravitated toward you.”
“Well, I saw the opposite. Do you know what it feels like to have your boyfriend do all of the fun things he likes to do with someone else? I was fine for sex, but you were the one he wanted to go see music with. You were the one he wanted to study with or talk to for hours.”
Lela was hit by a realization that was difficult to wrap her head around. So much of her college existence framed in an entirely different way. That whole time she’d been spending time with Donovan, she hadn’t thought about what it might feel like from Genevieve’s point of view. “Oh, God, Genevieve. I’m so sorry. I never thought about it that way. I just looked at you and thought you had everything. I didn’t see any way I could possibly compete, so I didn’t see it that way.”
