Empty.
“She keeps the smaller bag inside the big one, to save space,” Jane said.
She did a quick sweep of the room looking for the smaller bag anyway. Wyatt helped, shaking his head when he came up empty.
“So, she’s gone,” Jane said.
They searched the grounds and Gladdy’s room for another twenty minutes before Ms. Bea, one of the residents of the cottage, woke up from her nap and came out of her room to hear that Kathleen was missing.
“Oh, my goodness. I had no idea you were all looking for her,” Ms. Bea said. “She gave me a note to give you, Jane, as she was rushing out the door this afternoon.”
The lady pulled out a familiar envelope in light yellow—Gram’s signature stationery—and handed it to Jane.
Tearing it open, Jane read:
My Darling Jane,
Please don’t be upset. I know you think this is wrong, but I’m absolutely certain it’s right, and at our age, Leo and I simply don’t have time to waste. I hate that you won’t be there for the ceremony, but we’ll be back in a few days and have our own little family celebration then.
All my love,
Gram
Wyatt, reading over her shoulder, swore softly and shook his head.
“Eloped?” Jane yelled, then turned to glare at Wyatt. “They’ve eloped?”
“No. Leo wouldn’t do that. He absolutely promised me that he would never get married again without letting me take care of the prenup,” he claimed. “I’ve cleaned up too many messes of his before, after the fact, but never again. He swore to me.”
“Gram, too,” Jane admitted. “I made her promise the same thing. She actually has an investment portfolio thanks to me. I worked hard to make sure she’ll always be taken care of financially, and she promised she wouldn’t put it at risk.”
Wyatt smiled at her admiringly, then took her face in his hands and gave her a quick, deep, satisfying kiss. “There you go. That’s my girl. Woman, I mean. What a woman!”
He let her go, as if he might have forgotten where they were, or that he’d been surprised by the impulse to grab her and kiss her that way.
Jane looked around, seeing Gram and Gladdy’s friends in the cottage beaming at them. Amy, too. Ms. Steele, on the other hand, looked at Jane as if Jane had surely lost her mind, no doubt thinking all the Gray men were troublemakers.
“So,” Wyatt said, sounding very lawyerly once again. “We can hope they remember their promises to both of us and don’t go through with this. Or that we can find them in time to stop them.”
“How can we find them?” Jane asked. “We have no idea where they went.”
“If they’ve run off to get married, they’re headed for Vegas.”
“How do you know?” Jane asked.
“Leo always gets married in Vegas,” he stated, as if it was some kind of unwritten law.
“Sentimental, is he?” Jane guessed.
“Not so much about marriage, but about the city and this one little chapel on the strip, yes. What is that place called? It’s an Elvis song.”
“Doesn’t every hurry-up wedding chapel in Vegas have something to do with an Elvis song?”
“‘Love Me Tender.’ That’s it,” Wyatt confirmed. “The Love Me Tender Wedding Chapel.”
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