Indeed, Sumira had canceled at the last minute—again. This was starting to seem fishy, but now was not the moment to dwell on that. Owen had, as promised, prepared two huge bowls of popcorn: one sweet, one salty. It was clear that he wished Jane were there to watch with him because it was such a big moment, but of course she was across town recording on live TV. He kept saying, “Jane on live TV!” like he was so proud.
A few minutes in, I realized he kept texting someone, and I wondered if he was blowing up Jane’s phone, so I snuck a glance. No. The man was texting my own mother. Clearly they were on equal levels of excitement for their dear Jane.
Finally the dusty old news anchors announced a story about a girls’ coding class.
“And here to tell us all about it is our very own Jane Weiss.”
The camera panned over to Jane, and she was simply radiant. Hair and makeup had taken her usual beauty and cranked it up to megawattage. It was almost blinding, really. She talked about the story she had researched, and then they showed clips of her interviewing some of the coding girls.
We all took turns cooing, “Ooh, she’s doing so well” and shushing each other for talking too loud. Five minutes later, it was over.We applauded, and then Owen turned the volume down and we fell into comfortable chit-chat. Owen asked Eva about her library studies. Amy was curled in an armchair stroking Linus the cat. I watched them for several minutes without Amy noticing: she had a thoughtful look on her face as she cuddled Linus, and I wondered if she was contemplating the value of a cat compared to that of her husband.
We gathered up our things and thanked Owen for letting us join him. As we were filing out the door, he stopped me.
“Have you given any more thought to Jane’s bachelorette party yet?”
“Um. Some. I’m still trying to decide…” I trailed off, hoping that would satisfy him. I hoped he wouldn’t realize that I was running out of time: the party had to be in October, before Jane’s friend Kailey popped out another baby. But I was completely stuck. I knew exactly how I would plan a bachelorette party for myself or one of my friends. But Jane? It’s not that she didn’t enjoy a good party—Jane knew how to let loose, just in a very mellow way.
“Look,” Owen said, “I think she deserves a really fun night. She’s been working so hard, she hasn’t taken much time for herself.”
“Fun… how?” My mind was already barreling ahead, thinking about which places had the best Jane-friendly dance music.
“Well, when Kailey got married, she had a classic Vegas bachelorette party, and Jane loved it. She raved about it. I know you’re not going to take her to Vegas or anything like that, but—”
I cut him off, a smile creeping across my face. “Yes! A classic Seattle bachelorette party. I’m so glad you brought it up. I wasn’t sure if that would be right for Jane, but now I know exactly what to do!”
Owen beamed back at me. “I knew I could count on you, Rachel.”
We hugged goodbye and I headed for the bus stop, my mind spinning with ideas.
That night I crafted an itinerary consisting of karaoke, small bites, and big dance floors. After Jane gave her approval, I sent out an e-vite to her friends and, of course, my besties. (They had to be there to help me get the party started.) I was going to make sure the world’s best sister had the bachelorette party she deserved.
CHAPTER 22
TUESDAY MORNING, SHERYL ANDI were chatting in the office kitchen, refilling our coffee mugs. She’d asked how my volunteer gig was going, and Kenneth overheard and got all interested.
“Did I hear you say you’re giving lectures?” He bustled over to me like a Chihuahua in glasses.
“Um.” I gave Sheryl a look that plainly said:Men… always interrupting girl talk.“Not exactly. I volunteer with seniors, and yesterday I taught about twenty of them what Wikipedia is. Some of them were really excited to be able to contribute their knowledge of the Battle of Hastings and paper piece quilting techniques.”
“But Rachel, this is amazing news.” Kenneth glanced at Sheryl, apparently hoping for a moment of privacy with me, but Sheryl looked blithely on. (She was not one to remove herself from a potentially gossip-worthy situation.) “It’s just come down from leadership that we need to train our teams on professionalism, diversity and inclusion, things like that.”
I nodded, biting back a groan at the prospect of my privileged male coworkers fumbling their way through a conversation about diversity.
“The thing is,” Kenneth continued, “they really want to, you know, do this as cheaply as possible.”
“Of course,” I said. Hey, our billionaire CEO didn’t become a billionaire by throwing money at silly things like diversity and inclusion education.
“So…” Kenneth pushed his glasses up and smiled slightly, his face flushing. My blank expression must have told him that I had no idea what he was getting at. “So, if you think you would be up to the challenge…”
“IfIthink—?” I was growing alarmed.
“We could do a test run of our immediate team, see how it goes. If I were the one to come forward with this idea… and if you were the one to step up… well, this could be great for both of us, Rachel.”
“A test run?” I was desperately trying to catch up to his train of thought, but it was chugging away without me.
“If you wrote the curriculum and gave a talk, facilitated the discussion. It would start with, say, a dozen people. You could pick the first topic—say, inclusion. And then if it works, you could lecture to other teams—maybe train other volunteers on how to facilitate as well.”
I swallowed. Sheryl was nodding in aHey, that’s not a bad ideasort of way. My typical reaction to any of Kenneth’s ideas was long-suffering patience, but I was having a different reaction now: lecture ideas were piling up in my mind and a smile was bubbling to the surface as I pictured myself in a tight pencil skirt, strutting at the front of a classroom with a long pointer in hand.
