I hear footsteps and voices in the kitchen behind me. Patty hears them too, and her gaze flicks past me—she’s sitting facing the glassed-in kitchen addition, whereas I’m looking out toward the yard—and I see her expression change from one of annoyance to wide-eyed alarm.
I turn in my chair to see who Cooper has let inside the house, but not before I recognize one of the voices. My blood goes cold in my veins, despite the warm evening air.
“What are you talking about?” A trim, middle-aged woman dressed in a cream-colored pantsuit is asking Cooper as she clip-clops behind him in a pair of high heels. “She’ll be delighted to see me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Cooper says. His voice is as cold as the wine in my glass. He’s leading the woman past the kitchen table and toward the open door to the back deck, his expression grim, while Frank follows behind them both, Indiana squirming in his arms.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” the woman says. She has an expertly coiffed auburn bob and a tastefully made-up face, a filmy cream-colored scarf thrown around her throat, probably more for dramatic effect than to hide whatever the ravages of time have done to her neck—she was always a fan of plastic surgery. “She wants to see me. I’m here because she invited me.”
Patty’s hand closes around my wrist. Her fingers feel as cold as my blood has gone.
“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” she whispers. Like mine, Patty’s gaze is glued to the woman in the kitchen. “Your future sister-in-law, the do-gooder—”
“Nicole,” I say, through lips gone numb with shock.
“Yeah. She told me at our last fitting—the one you couldn’t come to because you had that emergency drug-and-alcohol-awareness training session—that she felt bad because there were so many more people on the groom’s side than the bride’s. So she got some kid from where you work to swipe your Rolodex, and your dad to cough up an address book I guess he copied from you a while back, and then she went through them both and added a whole bunch of people to the bride’s side.”
I feel a swooping sensation in the pit of my stomach, and it isn’t the good kind, the kind I get when Cooper comes walking into the room and I realize all over again how handsome he looks and how lucky I am that he chose me (of course, he’s lucky I chose him too). It’s the bad kind of swooping, the kind that means Warning, warning, get out now.
This is what I get, I think to myself. This is what I get for being too busy at work to pay attention to my wedding, and leaving it all up to Perry. Who, Cooper informed me earlier, hadn’t been too pleased about the fact that we’d canceled lunch. She’d stressed how busy and important she is, and implied her schedule is so tight, we might not get another appointment with her before our actual wedding day.
A day I can now see is going to be a disaster.
“Jessica and Magda and I told Nicole she shouldn’t have done it,” Patty goes on rapidly, “that you’d invited everyone you wanted to, but she said that it would be a nice surprise, and that your dad and Cooper approved them all, but now I’m guessing—”
“She didn’t tell anybody,” I say. My throat has gone as dry as sand, but I can’t move a muscle to reach for my wineglass. “Except my dad, I’ll bet, who’s been hoping for a reconciliation between us two for a long time.”
The woman standing inside the glass addition sees Patty and me sitting beneath the string of party globes and claps her hands dramatically.
“There she is!” she cries. “There’s my girl!”
Then she rushes through the open screen door and out onto the deck to embrace me, nearly choking me in a thick cloud of Chanel perfume, a scent I’ve only ever associated with her, and not in a good way.
“Hi, Mom,” I say.
9
I don’t want to look like a big white lightbulb
I don’t want to shine too bright
I don’t want to look like a marshmallow
I only want you to hold me tight
“Wedding Gown,”
written by Heather Wells
Uh, honey,” Frank says to Patty from the doorway. “We need to get going now.”
“In a minute.”
Patty’s gaze is riveted on my mother, who has taken a seat in the chair Cooper had vacated to answer the door.
Lucy, usually friendly to strangers (she’s a wonderful companion, but the world’s worst watchdog), slinks out from beneath the chair and goes inside. Perhaps she, like Patty, suspects that fireworks are about to go off. Unlike Patty, however, Lucy has the sense to get out of the blast range.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your little party,” my mother says, looking down at the detritus of our meal. “I’m so glad you learned how to cook, Heather. That’s a skill every bride should have.”
“I didn’t,” I say coldly. “Cooper made it. What are you doing here, Mom?”
“Patty, we really need to leave,” Frank says, his tone more urgent than before. “It’s past Indy’s bedtime.”
Frank’s son is wriggling in his arms, crying to be put down, pointing in the direction Lucy has gone. He wants to run over my dog’s feet with his trucks some more.
“What do you mean, what am I doing here?” my mother asks. “You’re the one getting married. You sent me an invitation!”
She opens her arms wide, and silver bangles jangle on both her slim wrists. She’s wearing quite a bit of jewelry. Rings on almost every finger, long silver chains and pendants around her neck, and a diamond stud in each earlobe that peeks out beneath her red hair—hair that was frosty blond the last time I’d seen her.