Light the Lamp (36 page)

“
It looks great
, Noelle,” said Molly O’Brien, my new boss at Willamette Events and Party Planning. She took a few steps back from the table I’d been setting up for tonight’s dinner. “I love what you’ve done. Now I need you to repeat that on every table in the dining section.”
 

I glanced at the rows upon rows of tables, taking a quick count in my head. There were twenty-five tables in total, each seating twelve people. I not only had to take care of the centerpieces but also set out each place setting. Molly was a perfectionist, too, and I had no intention of letting her down.

“
Got it. How much time do I have left?” I still hadn’t gotten used to wearing a watch. It was in my tote bag, stored in one of the back rooms near the hotel’s ballroom, where I was working.
 

“
They’ll start to arrive in about two and a half hours.”
 

I nodded. It had taken me fifteen minutes to set up the first table, but now that I had something to replicate I should be able to cut that time down significantly for each one that remained. I didn’t have any time to waste, though.

“
I’ll be setting up the auction tables if you need me.” She walked over to the other side of the big ballroom and got to work, and I buried my head in my own task.
 

The big event tonight was an auction of some sort, raising money for a charity that assisted addicts who’d broken laws during the course of their addictions to turn their lives around and become upstanding members of the community.

I couldn’t remember what the organization hosting the event tonight was called. They were new to the area, and this was their first event in Portland. It didn’t matter what they were called. I was just glad I could be part of such a good cause.

The whole time I’d been working on the centerpiece for this table, I’d been thinking about the man who had killed my parents. In the course of his trial, we’d learned that he was high that night. He held up the convenience store because he needed money for his next hit. As far as I knew, he was still in prison. But maybe someday, when he was released…maybe then he could get help from an organization like this.

I liked the idea of that.

When I was just finishing up with the last of my tables, Molly came over to help me put the finishing touches on it.

“
All right,” she said once we were done. “Why don’t you go back and get changed, then go into the kitchen? The caterer wants to give you a few instructions about how she wants things done. I’ll get all the candles lit and take care of the last-minute details.”
 

“
On my way.” I grinned and then scurried off to do what she’d asked.
 

Tonight’s event was much dressier than the other events I’d worked so far, so I had to wear a tuxedo vest and bow tie with a pressed and starched white shirt, knee-length black skirt, and black pumps. I could hear the guests starting to arrive by the time I’d finished getting myself properly attired, so I hurried off to the kitchen to be briefed by the caterer alongside the other members of the night’s staff. She was incredibly specific with everything she wanted: serve guests from the right not the left, pay attention to the placement of the plates, don’t lean over the guests to fill their glasses, never speak above a whisper when someone was on stage talking to the room, and on and on.

I soaked it all in, committing it all to memory so I wouldn’t screw anything up. Not only did I need this job but I truly believed in what this organization was doing. I wanted everything to be as perfect as Molly did, as perfect as the caterer did.

The kitchen staff had been busy loading carts full of individually plated appetizers while she gave us our instructions. Molly had a worker like me for every table, and each of us got a cart. As we pushed them out into the hall to take them to the ballroom, the caterer stopped us individually to be certain we knew how the plates should be placed in front of the guests. I was near the back of the line, one of the last to head out.

“
Just like so,” she said, “with this streak of balsamic reduction pointing toward two o’clock if the plate was a clock face.”
 

“
Perfect,” I murmured, pushing my cart out into the hall. “Two o’clock.” I followed the line of workers pretty much all dressed exactly like me, turning the corner into the darkened ballroom.
 

A few sconces with red coverings along the outer walls added a bit more light to the red tapers and pillars and votive candles adorning each of the centerpieces, but it was still dim enough that my eyes took a few moments to adjust. The person behind me bumped her cart into me, and so I hurried to make my way to my table, one of the ones closest to the slightly raised stage area.

Up on the stage, a woman I’d met briefly when Molly and I first arrived this afternoon was welcoming everyone in at the microphone. Jessica Lynch, if I remembered correctly. She was the person in charge, the one who’d put the whole thing together and hired Willamette Events to do all the work.

I pulled my cart up alongside my table and took a breath, then set to work. Streak of balsamic points to two o’clock. Serve from the right. Fill glasses away from the table instead of leaning over. In only a few minutes, I’d served appetizers and filled water glasses for seven of the twelve people at my table without incident while the woman on stage got through her welcome speech. I wasn’t really paying any attention to her. My focus was on making sure I did my job exactly as I was supposed to do it.

But then her tone changed a bit, just as I picked up the small plate for the eighth person at my table.

“
Without any further delay,” Ms. Lynch said, “let me turn it over to the founder and head of the Light the Lamp Foundation, none other than Liam Kallen, one of the newest additions to our very own Portland Storm!”
 

My head shot up, and my pulse thundered through my veins. Two tables over from me, Liam was rising from his seat and straightening his tuxedo jacket before climbing the steps and joining her. He’d shaved, probably today. It was the first time I had ever seen him with a smooth jaw. I choked on my tongue, but no one could hear me over the mixture of polite applause and raucous whooping.

I couldn’t make a scene. I couldn’t do anything that would draw his attention to me, which meant I had to get myself back to work and make sure I was meticulous about it. Thank goodness the lighting was dim. Maybe he wouldn’t notice me.

“
Thank you all so much for coming tonight,” he started, the rich timbre of his voice wrapping around me and squeezing so hard it hurt to breathe. I couldn’t focus on him. I’d never get through the night if I did, and then I’d lose this job, too.
 

I swallowed, steeled my spine, and set the plate in my hand down in front of the next gentleman. “Water, sir?” I said, making sure I kept my voice down. I reached for his glass.

“
Noelle?”
 

The man’s hand closed over my wrist, gentle but firm, and I suddenly couldn’t breathe at all. My head shot up so I could see him. Dark eyes, made darker in the dim lighting. Dark hair buzzed short like a military cut. It was one of Liam’s teammates. Jonny? I couldn’t remember which one it was for sure, but I knew without a doubt that I was right in my assumption.

I shook my head, hoping he would know that meant
not now
or
I can’t talk to you
or
please don’t let Liam know I’m here
.

“
It is you,” he said.
 

I tugged my hand free and gave him a pleading look. “Let me do my job. Please.”

He ground his jaw, but he nodded.

I hurried through serving the rest of my table and pushed my cart back out into the hall. I’d made it halfway to the kitchen when my chest hurt so bad I couldn’t tell if I was having a heart attack or just struggling to breathe.

I leaned back against the wall, trying to get myself under control again.
Now what?
 

 

 

The appetizers had
all been cleared away, and the workers were coming back in, carts laden with plates bearing the main course. In the time I’d been on stage, I’d explained what the Light the Lamp Foundation was, how we used the money we raised, what we did for the community in generic terms. Everyone in the audience seemed to still be with me, not dozing off or zoning out.

Now came the hard part, though. Now I had to talk about why Light the Lamp mattered so much to me. Now I had to give it a human element.

I took a moment to try to calm myself, to focus on making sure every word that came out of my mouth was exactly what I wanted to say. It was easy to get lost during this part, to get so caught up in the rawness of emotion that came over me that I would go off on a tangent. I didn’t want that to happen. Not tonight. Almost all of my new teammates were here, along with hundreds of people from the community. This was my first chance to show them who I really was. Not the hockey player, but the man.

I had to get it right.

The audience was getting restless, so I had to keep going before I lost them. I picked up the remote control for the slideshow and pressed the button that would move it to the next slide.

“
Now I want to tell you a little about how Light the Lamp came to be. This is Liv,” I said. My voice cracked a little but not too badly. I had to keep going, though, or it was going to get worse. “She was my wife. Well—” I paused and looked back at the image of her on the screen, chuckling because this picture had been taken when she was only five years old.  “—technically, at this point, she wasn’t my wife. Not yet. That was around the time we met, though, and she was beautiful to me even then.”
 

The audience laughed with me. I could do this. I’d done it before, so tonight shouldn’t be any different.

“
I still remember the first time I saw her. She had a big grin and an infectious laugh. Her hair was neat and tidy in braids, but she was wearing these huge rubber galoshes that had to have
been her father’s. They were easily three times the size of her feet, and she kept tripping over them and almost falling down. The two of them had gone out fishing, and I was doing the same with my dad. Liv caught the first fish of the day, and after her father helped her take it off the hook, she brought it over and held it up to me to show off, but she tripped over those galoshes at the last second and her fish slapped me in the face. I might have fallen in love with her that day even though I’d thought it was maybe the grossest thing I’d ever experienced in my life.”
 

The audience laughed and sighed and said, “Aww,” and I knew they were as hooked on the story I was weaving as that fish had been on Liv’s line. I flipped to the next slide, a picture of the two of us when we were teenagers, a couple of years before Alzheimer’s stole her father away from her.

A flash of blond hair out of the corner of my eye distracted me, off to my right. My mind immediately turned to Noelle, but it wasn’t her. It was just one of the workers running the event. I couldn’t think that every blonde I saw was Noelle. I forced the thought out of my mind and kept going.

“
Liv and I were around each other a lot as we grew up. We went to school together. Her family moved into a house just down the street from mine, and we spent our summers running off to get into one adventure after another. She was always trying to catch frogs and other creatures and then make me kiss them—probably because of the fish-face incident—but before long it was me trying to catch her. And kiss her, of course. She was a lot nicer to kiss than a frog, I can promise you that.”
 

I caught a few smiles and nods in the crowd before I flipped to the next slide. It was an image Liv’s dad carrying her piggy-back style, both of them smiling bright enough to light up a room, just like Noelle’s smile did.