Page 67 of Always You (A Lilac Bay Novel)

She pointed at the list. “Sing, Sing, Sing.Benny Goodman. It’s jazzy. It’s a good song for swing dancing.” Suddenly she gasped and slapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God, I have the best idea!”

“What?” I cried, grabbing her hand.

“That could be our theme!”

“Swing dancing?”

“No, the roaring twenties! It fitsperfectly, Riley! That was the heyday of this island, all the auto barons coming up here on vacation. The glamor and the romance of it!” She was actually jumping up and down. “I mean, the Ottawa is completely steeped in that exact style!”

She definitely had a point. I wasn’t exactly an expert when it came to identifying fashion of the varying decades, but even I knew that a lot of the history of our island was established in the teens and twenties.

“I think you’re onto something, Jenny.”

But she was barely listening. Instead she grabbed my arm, her eyes huge in her face. “You’re not going to like this, but hear me out. We should have the flashmob at the Big Hotel.”

She was right. I didn’t like it. Yes, the hotel was an icon of this island. But doing an entire televised event up there felt like rewarding them in a way I wasn’t comfortable with. I just couldn’t get the image out of my mind of that ferry full of employees heading out every night.

“Riley, Iknow,” she said, her voice pleading. “I know what you’re thinking. But just picture it, okay? The big stairs coming down into the foyer. The front porch! All of that old paneling and the chandeliers. The lawn! It would be perfect.”

Itwouldbe perfect. I could see it clearly. We had at our fingertips a truly gorgeous space that would fit this theme perfectly. Was I going to refuse out of pride?

“Let’s get the rest of the committee together,” I told her, excitement rising in my chest.

“Yeah?” She threw her arms around me, squealing, and released me before I had a chance to hug her back. “Sorry, I just got really excited.”

I laughed. “Get everyone over here.”

A few minutes later the rest of the team gathered around me.

“Jenny just had an amazing idea,” I said, then explained the whole concept of the roaring twenties at the Big Hotel and the Benny Goodman song.

“Ooh,” Libby murmured. “That would be so cool!”

“Like Gatsby,” Donovan said, nodding. “I like it.”

Only Rose was frowning. “Wasn’t Benny Goodman in the thirties?”

Jenny and I looked at each other, wide-eyed. Had we based this entire plan on the wrong decade? “It doesn’t matter,” I said firmly. “It’s jazzy. It will work.”

And that was that. We had a theme and a song and now all that was left was to do the actual work of making it come together.

The next several hours passed in a blur. More than two hundred people volunteered to dance, while a good fifty more were on hand to help get the square set up. Once we had everyone divided up into teams, we assigned dance captains to each one. While their teams worked on the steps, the captains meet at the foot of the gazebo to plan the rest of the dance. Meanwhile, David and I divided the non-dancing volunteers into three groups—one to concentrate on decorations, one to come up with costumes, and one to worry about food and drink. I had decided that if we were going to all of this trouble to plan a single dance, we were damn well going to enjoy it. And what was an event on Lilac Bay without a party? Besides, Gina had said they wanted us to go all out. So we would have the flash mob, and then we would celebrate with a dance party on the great lawn of the Ottawa. If that wasn’t going all out, I didn’t know what was.

“What’s next?” Andrew asked, appearing at my side. David had taken the food committee off to plan a menu, leaving me with those that were going to help me decorate.

“We need to brainstorm ideas,” I said. “Our theme is the roaring twenties, so we need everything to reflect that.” I looked out over the group sitting in front of me on the grass.

“We have all the decorations from the Fish Fry in the storage room at the senior center,” Andrew said.

I shook my head. That wasn’t good enough. Sure, the square had looked great all done up in lanterns and fairy lights for the first feature, but this needed to be more than that. We needed to step up our game. Besides, the Big Hotel was way too glamorous for crèpe paper and lanterns.

“The roaring twenties, huh?” Andrew asked, rubbing his chin. “What if I built one of those lighted signs? You know, the ones with the bulbs that stick through.” He pulled out his phone to show me what he had in mind.

“You think you can do that?”

“Sure, it’s an easy enough project if I have some help.”

I gestured at our group, which contained his cousin Greg and his father. “Take whoever you need.”