Page 46 of Fool Me

“I might be…if they saw me.”

She let out a girlish giggle that made her shoulders quiver. “Oh, don’t worry. There are plenty of lesser mortals taking pictures of my new arm candy.”

More like used gum under your shoe, but okay.

28

Aman in red coveralls and holding a tray approached at a near jog as Sadie reached the pool area.

“Please tell me you’re one of the workers from the deli and you didn’t just happen to wear that costume!” Desperation darkened his eyes. Sadie nodded, whereupon he thrust a large, silver tray of cocktail shrimp into her hands. “These people are hungrier than fasting sharks. When it’s close to empty, come back to the tables and pick up a new full tray of something else.”

“Got it,” Sadie said. Gripping the tray, she maneuvered through the crowd. Familiar voices rose up all around her and she mentally tried to place them. Most of Hollywood’s movie greats stood within millimeters of her—a veritable galaxy of silver screen stars. But Sadie couldn’t risk celebrity watching. She had to keep her head down in case one of them was Julia.

To her horror, Ronny was suddenly to her right, staring directly at her with a look of pleased surprise. Sadie’s heart hammered against her ribs. Dang it!She’d been discovered already?

“Ohhh! Shrimp!” he exclaimed and motioned for everyone in the large group around him to take some as he jabbered on about how he’d had it flown in all the way from Ecuador. Sadie breathed out relief. Not even Ronny paid attention to the green Oompa Loompa handing out Ecuadorean crustaceans. She scurried away from him as soon as she could.

A couple of minutes later, a glimmer of lime green flashed from somewhere up ahead in the crowd, sending a jolt of hope through Sadie. Andrea had been wearing that exact color. Perhaps she could get her to confess where more people would hear? She’d certainly been eager enough to tell her story to her friend. If not, perhaps she could pretend to recognize her from the beach photos and make a fuss until others made the connection too.

She maneuvered as quickly as she could toward the spot where she’d seen the glint of lime green, but the crowd crushed in around her, and people kept stopping her for shrimp. She craned her neck, and considered going up on tiptoe, but dared not peek her head above the crowd lest someone recognize her. Losing hope, a wisp of chartreuse finally caught her eye not twenty feet away. She pushed her tray forward like a battering ram as she bull-dozed through the throng, not caring which Hollywood royalty got a little jostled in the process or how many prawns liberated themselves to the sand below. But when she reached her target, hope fizzled. Rather than Andrea, the “drowned” woman, it was a middle-aged woman drowning in an oversized, lime green tunic.

Sadie gave the woman a forced smile as whatever gumption she’d scraped together to try to “save” Grant from Julia’s clutches drained away. The night air tittered with the sounds of impossibly beautiful people laughing their confident, successful laughs, trading jokes about the industry they had all managed to conquer, and networking and making plans for their next blockbuster successes. And there was Sadie, a pitiful blonde waif in a green, cotton duck suit so boring its most decorative features were zippers and snaps.

In the game of ‘one of these things is not like the others,’ she was the thing that didn't belong. Wave after wave of doubt began crashing over her. What was she doing, and why did she think that she, of all people, could help Grant? Wherever he was in this crowd, hedidbelong. What if Julia would make his dreams come true? What if all Sadie was accomplishing by searching for Andrea was creating more trouble for Grant? Was she truly trying to help him this time, or was she meddling in his life again? To top it off, she didn’t have any shrimp left and had just shoved an empty silver tray into the face of a total stranger.

“Honey,” the woman in the green tunic said with an accent as deep as Dolly Parton’s, “are you okay? You’re shakin’.”

Sadie blinked up at her, surprised someone had even seen her as a person. The woman had medium blonde hair in a wedge, the same way Sadie’s mom had worn hers. She was about the age Sadie’s mother would be if she was alive, and the kindness in the stranger’s eyes reminded Sadie of her mother.

Sadie’s heart squeezed so tight she feared it might never beat again. She struggled to fit a breath past the lump that assaulted her throat like the jab of a twisting knife. Her mother would have known just what to do right now, just what to say to make Sadie feel better and get her life back on track. She would have convinced Sadie not only that Kelly green was her color, but that green peppers were the most beautiful vegetable ever created. And her dad—her dad would have demanded her coveralls, stuffed his six-foot frame into them, and taken her place as a server so she could have fun at the party.

All these years, she’d been focused on the reason her parents had died that night—Sadie’s graduation, Sadie’s culpability. But in this moment, she understood how those thoughts had been the biggest ruse of all, a bigger trick than even devious Julia Menlo could pull off. Blaming herself for their deaths had been Sadie’s way of distracting herself from the real pain: the absence of their love and guidance from her life forever.

Monique and I didn’t just lose Mom and Dad that day, she heard Ginny saying.And we miss you.

I miss me too, she had said in return, but she hadn’t truly meant it because she hadn’t fully understood. Until now. Shedidmiss the old Sadie. The Sadie that would have ripped off this stupid green jumpsuit and not only joined the party but become the life of it. The Sadie that would have let herself be loved by Grant and let herself love him right back, not in secret, but loudly and joyously, the way her parents had loved each other and enjoyed every day they had together.

The woman stared at her with increasing concern. Between Sadie’s tear-streaked face and the empty tray quivering in her white-knuckled grip, she must look quite the picture. Sadie was long past caring. She knew exactly what she needed to do, and exactly what her beloved parents would want her to do. It was time to find Grant and tell him, finally, that she loved him—that she’d always loved him. Then, even if she had to wrestle Julia in the sand the way Grant had wrestled Slinger in the mud, she would force Julia to admit to Grant that she’d orchestrated the drowning. What was that sideways body slam he’d done into Slinger’s kneecaps? Okay, maybe she wouldn't take things quite that far.Or maybe she would.

Balancing the tray with one hand, she whipped off the straw hat. Her blonde curls exploded from their confines. “I didnotkill my mom and dad,” she announced to the dumbstruck woman. “And Ideserveto be loved!”

With that, whirled around in a one-eighty, searching the dense crowd for a sign of Grant. Unfortunately, she completely forgot she still held the large tray. As she turned, its edge scraped the backs of a youngish couple who’d moved in close behind her. Surprised, they leaned forward hard, but the woman leaned too far and lost her balance. Her date tried to catch her but only managed to make the situation worse. Sadie stood frozen, watching in horror as the couple toppled forward together and ended up knocking into the four people they’d been speaking to. Like bowling pins, a chain reaction of uncontrolled falling ensued within the tightly packed crowd, accompanied by screams and screeches that momentarily blotted out the cover band’s chorus of “Good Vibrations.”

Sadie scrabbled forward too, trying to stop the carnage, but gravity and the topsy-turvy ground created by the sand outwitted her. An enormous man at the rear of the group tottered next, falling backwards like a sequoia getting the ax. Behind him, Sadie saw a sparkle of blue. The swimming pool. Baptism appeared to be in the man’s immediate future, but instead, he pin-balled off some other unfortunate guest standing between him and the water. Sadie heard a high-pitched screech of surprise follow by a large splash.

Sadie picked her way toward the pool’s edge, ready to apologize and offer aid to whomever had met a watery fate due to her poorly wielded tray, but once she got a good look at the victim, her sympathy evaporated.

29

Even before Grant had fully understood that a person on the other side of the pool had fallen into the deep end, he’d slipped off his loafers. In another half beat, the water closed in around him in a cool hug. Swimming toward the thrashing figure, he tried to size up the situation. Swear words that would embarrass a sailor flew from her lips, but she didn’t seem to be sinking. At one point she went under, but then popped right back up, a pair of soggy sandals gripped in her hand.

“Do you need help?” he said as he surfaced next to her.

“I can swim circles around you, buddy,” the woman snapped. “I’m just pissed about my shoes.”

She looked right at him, and the horror blooming on her face matched the recognition exploding in Grant’s mind. His gaping mouth filled with water as his legs momentarily forgot to tread. Her wide-set, brown eyes. Her dirty-blonde hair. “Aren’t you the person I rescued at Be-Seen yesterday?”

“I don't know what you’re talking about,” she said, but her curtness gave a different answer. She sounded not only defiant but, oddly, frightened.

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