Buried In Buttercream

cost?”
    “I don’t know, but it’s a really nice place. Must be a king’s ransom.”
    He licked the last remaining crumb from his finger, wiped his hands on the paper napkin, then wadded the sack and wrapper into a ball and tossed it into a nearby waste can.
    Then he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. Taking a debit card from inside, he said, “What the heck, Van. We’re only going to do this once. Let’s do it right.”
    He handed it to her.
    She stared down at it. “Really?”
    “Yes. You deserve it.”
    “But ... but ... I ... you ...”
    He laughed. “You figure a dude who lives to score a free cup of coffee off somebody ain’t the type to plunk down a king’s ransom for a wedding?”
    “Something like that.”
    “Well, that’s how a guy like me operates. We save a nickel everywhere we can and only spend it on the important stuff.”
    Savannah felt tears welling up in her eyes for the umpteenth time in the past forty-eight hours. “Thank you, darlin’,” she said.
    “No problem.” He turned his attention back to the computer screen. “By the way ... the password for that card is Cleo.”
    “C-L-E-O? As in, my cat?”
    “Soon to be our cat.”
    “How long has your password been Cleo?”
    He thought for a moment. “How old is she?”
    “She and Diamante are ten. I got them when they were six months old.”
    “Then my password’s been C-L-E-O for nine and a half years.” He gave her a quick sideways glance and saw that she was staring at him, love in her eyes.
    He blushed and glanced around the empty room, as though wary of eavesdroppers. “When I first saw her, I thought she was really cute. Don’t make a big deal outta it. Okay?”
    She laughed. “Okay. Tough guy. I won’t let it get around.”
    “Good. I got a reputation to maintain, you know. I’ll catch a load of crap if it gets out that I like cats.”
    “It’ll just be our little secret ... that, and the fact that you watched William’s and Kate’s wedding with me. Twice.”
    “Shhh!”

    Savannah was talking to Madeline on her cell phone as she walked into her house. Jack and Jillian nearly mowed her down as she passed them in the foyer—Jack chasing his sister through the entry and up the stairs.
    “That’s right,” she was telling the wedding planner. “The groom says go ahead with the country club plans. But still, try to watch the outlay, okay? We don’t need to go for broke here.”
    Madeline seemed vastly relieved, though eager to go, as she had another call coming through. She agreed to call once she had spoken to the club and gotten the earliest date possible.
    They said good-bye. And as Savannah clicked off her phone and listened to the youngest set of Vidalia’s twins wailing in the living room, she thought, Whatever that date is, it won’t be soon enough!
    She entered the room just in time to see Peter hurl his bottle across the room and take out one of her African violets that had been sitting on a windowsill, minding its own business. Dirt flew everywhere, but as luck would have it, most of it landed on the seat of her favorite chair.
    “Dadgummit, Peter!” Vidalia shouted from her position on the sofa, where she was stretched out, a tabloid magazine in one hand, a giant glass of sweet tea in the other. “If you keep throwing that bottle around like that, I’m gonna take it away from you!”
    Marietta tore her eyes away from the R-rated movie on TV long enough to weigh in on the matter. “I always said, ‘When they’re old enough to run around with the nipple clenched between their teeth, the bottle swingin’ back and forth, they’re too big for it.’”
    Savannah walked over to her chair to survey the damage. The violet was a goner. No doubt about that.
    Fortunately, she’d been too busy to water it for several days, so the dirt on the chair wasn’t too soggy.
    For a moment she considered telling her sister to get up off her lazy hind end and clean up her kid’s mess. But then she considered how little talent Vidalia had for housework. Vi’s idea of cleaning would be wetting a handful of paper towels and grinding the dirt so deeply into the fabric that it would never come out.
    As she walked into the kitchen to get a whisk broom and dustpan, Vidalia said, “Sorry about your plant, but it’s sorta your own fault that Peter’s upset.”
    Savannah stopped and turned back toward her sister, who had her nose back in her paper. “Oh? Do tell.”
    “He’s