Read Online Slice by William Patterson - Free Book Online

“something your father once said to me. Your sister was the one he understood best, because she was like him. But you . . . you were the one he most admired. Because, after all, you were just like your mother, the woman he loved.”
    Jessie was touched. “Thank you for telling me that, Mr. Thayer.”
    â€œHe was a good man, your father. I tried hard to get him to run for mayor of Sayer’s Brook. I had the entire Republican Town Committee ready to back him. But then, the heart attack took him from us.” A flicker of moisture appeared in the old man’s bright eyes. “He would have been a good mayor.”
    â€œYes, he would have, indeed,” Jessie said.
    Mr. Thayer squeezed her hand. “And now I will make my way around to the back and mingle with the Gorins. I am sure the conversation will be scintillating. That woman knows everything that goes on in this town.”
    Jessie laughed, and smiled after him as he walked off. She could see Monica and Todd coming out of their house now, heading up the hill, and in the street it looked like Heather and Bryan and their kids were on their way. Jessie took another deep breath and scooted back inside the house to put Mrs. Gorin’s casserole on the table.
    For a moment, she wanted to hurry upstairs to her bedroom and lock herself in her room. Jessie looked out the window as the guests assembled in the backyard. Aunt Paulette had walked up from her cottage carrying the big bowl of salad she’d made. The Gorins were greeting Monica and Todd, and Mr. Thayer was kissing Heather on the hand, and clapping Bryan on the back. Everyone had so far been nice to her; Mr. Thayer had even gone out of his way to tell her something nice about Dad. This was going to be easy. No one was going to hold any grudges about the troubles with Emil. That was six years ago now. It was over. Jessie needed to just forget it and move on. No one was blaming her anymore.
    But it wasn’t so easy to move on.
    At least, not from everything.
    She’d grown accustomed to seeing Todd in the last week. It wasn’t so hard seeing him. After all, their romance had been in high school. They’d just been kids. Sure, at the time, Jessie had been convinced Todd was her true and everlasting love—but she’d been a teenager, and most teenage girls believe their high school boyfriends are their soul mates, even if very few turn out to be so. So Jessie had been able to put some closure on Todd’s long-ago rejection of her in favor of her sister. It was Bryan Pierce who still dredged up the raw feelings.
    Unlike Todd, who’d become part of Jessie’s family, Bryan hadn’t been around in the days before Jessie left. He and Heather had been living elsewhere when Jessie had taken up with Emil, and it had only been while Jessie had been away that the happy couple—and their two adorable kids—had moved into the Wilson house on Hickory Dell. So Jessie had maybe seen them just two or three times—and then just fleeting encounters—since college and the heartache of the breakup.
    And Bryan held a different place in her heart than Todd. Jessie had really, really fallen for Bryan. She had allowed herself to go so far as to imagine marrying him. She’d been twenty and twenty-one years old when they’d dated, old enough for deeper, more profound feelings than the teenage crush she’d had on Todd. So when Bryan told her he had fallen in love with Heather—the best friend in whom Jessie had confided her hopes and dreams of marriage—it had been a devastating blow. It had left Jessie shattered, and susceptible to the machinations of Emil Deetz.
    She looked outside through the window once again. There was Bryan, looking a little older than she remembered him, with his red hair slightly receding at his temples, but really just as handsome as ever. He was flashing that smile of his, and his green eyes still sparkled when he did so.