The Wedding Sisters Page 25

“I haven’t been with Stowe as long as you’ve been with Andy,” she said carefully. “So no, I haven’t been attracted to someone else yet. But I’m sure, over the course of a lifetime together, it will happen. It’s normal to be attracted to other people, Amy. We’re human.”

  “What if I acted on it?”

  “Did you?”

  Amy nodded. Fresh tears.

  “Does he know?”

  Amy shook her head. “No. But this woman at work saw me with him—I was just trying to say good-bye. End it—and it wasn’t even anything to end. Just one time. And now I’m afraid she’s going to tell Andy!”

  “That would be really stupid on her part.”

  “Why?”

  “Haven’t you heard the expression ‘don’t shoot the messenger’? The person who delivers unwanted news always gets burnt by it. If she tells him, it could really backfire on her.”

  “Not as bad as it will on me.”

  “Who was the other guy?”

  “Ugh, I don’t want to talk about it. And he’s really—It doesn’t matter.” She paused, peering into the distance. “Is that Gran?”

  Sure enough, their grandmother was slowly making her way down the stone path. “What are you girls doing hiding out here?” Rose called out.

  When she was closer, within comfortable earshot, Meg said, “We’re just talking. Where’s everyone else? Are they finished?”

  “Finished? We’re going to be here for hours!”

  “Oh.”

  “What’s the problem?” Rose said, pushing up her glasses. Meg slid over to make room at the end of the bench. Rose sat, leaning forward to get a closer look at Amy.

  “Nothing, Gran. Everything’s fine.”

  “Um-hmm,” she said. “Which one of you is having second thoughts?”

  Meg and Amy looked at each other. Amy shook her head, ever so slightly.

  “No one’s having second thoughts, Gran,” said Meg. “We’re just taking a little breather from the tour.”

  “Well, have it your way. You can lie to me if you want. I see nothing wrong with a good solid lie every once and a while. The world couldn’t exist without them. Just as long as you don’t lie to yourselves.”

  twenty-three

  Jo looked across the breakfast table at Toby and thought, I have to tell him.

  She had exactly one hour before her People magazine interview, where she would be expected to say whatever it was that excited brides-to-be said. She would talk about her engagement, the dress, the honeymoon. She would talk about how she and Toby met.

  How they fell in love.

  Except, they hadn’t. Or rather, she hadn’t. He knew that she wasn’t madly in love with him. She’d been clear about that. And he didn’t care. But he also didn’t know she was now infatuated with someone else. This thing with Leigh—and it could only be called a “thing” because it barely existed—it wasn’t a relationship, it wasn’t a friends-with-benefits situation. It had been a one-night stand, but Jo couldn’t accept that it would never be anything more. That it would never happen again. And even if Leigh stuck by her insistence that they just be friends—at least Jo knew she could feel passion again. That she wasn’t dead inside after Caroline, and that she shouldn’t want to be.

  The entire thing was making her sick. She was exhausted. Her nerves were so bad, she’d thrown up twice.

  “Toby,” she said quietly.

  He looked up from his iPad, shaking a lock of blond hair from his face. With the light coming in off the park, he was lit from behind, like a photo from an Instagram “Hot Guys with Coffee” series. He deserved to be with a woman who was in love with him. There were probably legions of them out there.

  “What time’s your interview?” he asked. “Should I roll with you?”

  “No, I’m just going to go myself. It shouldn’t take too long.” Truthfully, she had no idea how long the interview would take. Her mother had simply told her to show up at the apartment at ten wearing the Jeffrey Bruce outfit Amy had messengered over, black pants and a black blouse with a mandarin collar. I’m not wearing this, she’d muttered to herself, and paired the pants with a faded gray Lucky brand Union Jack T-shirt.

  “Cool,” said Toby.

  “Listen,” she said, unbuttoning the top button of the pants, which were too small for her. “I’m thinking maybe this is a little crazy.”

  “It’s totally crazy. So just rock it. You look gorgeous.” He jumped up from his seat and walked around the table to hug her.

  She slipped her arms around him and tried to muster something resembling the yearning she felt for Leigh whenever she was anywhere near her. Nothing.

  “I mean us. What we’re doing,” Jo murmured against his chest.

  “It’s not crazy. It’s perfect,” he said, stroking her hair.

  She pulled back. “Aren’t you even upset that I’m saying that? That I’m thinking it?”

  “No. Look, your mother and your sisters are in fairy-tale-wedding la-la land, and we’re different. We’re getting married because it works for us. We don’t expect it to be something it’s not.”

  Jo crossed her arms. “What do you expect it to be?”

  “I expect to spend my life with my favorite person in the world, a beautiful woman I want more than I want anyone else.”

  “What about what I want?”

  “You want security. A safe landing. And sometimes you like it when we fuck. That’s more than a lot of people have going into a marriage.”

  “What if I’m attracted to other people?” Jo bit her lip.

  “Then be with them. Like I said, this isn’t your parents’ marriage.”

  “Do you plan to be with other people?”

  He shrugged. “Probably. I mean, life is long. Why not?”

  “Toby, what the hell? What’s the point in even doing this?” She paused, remembering their last conversation about marriage. “Is this about your trust fund?”

  “No. I mean, yes, I’m happy to get it. And I have to marry someone eventually. But I’m picking you because of the way I feel about you and because I think we have as much of a chance of being happy together as anyone else who maybe goes about things more … conventionally. I’m in love with you; you’re not in love with me. I can live with that, Jo.”

  But I don’t know if I can.

  “Jo, go do the interview. Get some pictures taken—we’ll hang them in the entrance foyer to the place on Leonard Street. And then we’re going to have an epic life together.”

  It was useless. There was nothing to say that would provoke Toby into being the one to break off the engagement. If it was going to happen, it was on her. Jo didn’t know what to do. She wished she had a sign from the universe, but she suspected she was on her own with this one.

  There was just one other person she needed to talk to. And that person wouldn’t be happy about it.

  * * *

  Meryl sighed.

  The apartment had never looked more beautiful. It was magazine ready. And it should be for the weeks of work that Meryl had put into it: fresh paint, a new coffee table, photos that had been sitting in piles for months if not years finally framed.

  Preparing the apartment for the People magazine shoot had been bittersweet. After decades in the same place, she was seeing it through fresh eyes. She looked at the pencil marks near her bedroom closet, where she had measured the girls’ growth through high school and middle school, the initials M, A, and J etched into the eggshell-colored paint. She had never covered the marks, but in August when they were forced to move, she would leave them behind forever. In the girls’ bathroom, she noticed for the first time in years the place where the tiles were crooked, where she and Hugh had an ill-fated turn at home renovation. One of the tiles was handmade by Meg, a Mother’s Day craft from school. It was a blue tile with a red heart. Meryl traced it with her finger, wondering if she could somehow take it with them.

  “I don’t know why they want to photograph us here and not at our own apartment
s,” Amy had said.

  “They’ll do that too,” Meryl told her.

  Meryl suspected part of the reason they wanted photographs in the childhood home was because she’d told them the anecdote about them dressing up as brides as little girls, walking down the aisle together.

  “That’s priceless!” said Joan.

  “I have photos of it somewhere.”

  Now, in the apartment, the writer Kristin and the photographer wanted them to re-create that scene. Amy and Jo visibly balked at the idea, while Meg simply hung back silently.

  “Girls, come on,” said Meryl. No one moved, and if she’d had a cattle prod handy, she would have gladly used it. What was with the three of them?

  Hugh was working at the dining room table—the academic at home. The fireplace was lit. Kristin had commented that she rarely saw a working fireplace in Manhattan. Meryl hoped that made it into the article.

  It was hard for her to believe that, after twenty years, they would have to move out this summer. She shook the thought away.

  “They walked down this hall,” Meryl said to Kristin, turning to shoot the girls a death glare. “And I’ll never forget what they were wearing, because they squabbled about it every time. Hugh walked Meg first, then Amy, then Jo.” Meryl looped her arm through Amy’s and dragged her down the hall toward the kitchen like a recalcitrant dog on a leash.

  “Well, we can get that shot later,” Kristin said, glancing at the photographer. “Let’s get a shot of Mr. Becker working on his book.”

  Hugh, suddenly more animated than he had ever been during the entire wedding-planning process, smiled and then bent over his laptop as if mid-sentence.

  “The book is nonfiction, correct?” asked Kristin.

  “That’s right. It’s a definitive look at the Alcott sisters. I published a book about Abigail Alcott—the model for the mother in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women—in the 1980s. I’ve been working on this off and on since then. The challenge was making it less academic and something the commercial audience would like.”

  Meryl looked up. She didn’t know that. Why had he never mentioned it? Or had he shared this with her, and she simply never registered it?

  “And how is it coming along?”

  “Extremely well. I think I’ve finally cracked it. I have a new research assistant—a high school student helping me in her spare time. Her input has been invaluable. She brings a less rigid approach. It’s changed the entire tenor of the project.”

  “How did you find a high school student who was interested in researching the Alcott family in her spare time?”

  Hugh launched into Janell’s background and her arrival at Yardley as a scholarship student. One of his students. Until …

  Meryl shot him a warning look. Hugh was not going to get into all that. Not with People magazine.

  “Hugh…”

  “So they fired you? For standing up against an unfair policy? In defense of your student?”

  This, from the photographer.

  “It wasn’t, in theory, an unfair policy,” said Hugh. “In fact, I’d helped enact it a few years ago. But it had been established during a certain climate of cheating—of a sense among students that they could do no wrong, that they were privileged, they were owed good grades somehow. But that didn’t apply here. And maybe doesn’t apply most of the time. Like laws or policies or anything else, I felt the ‘one strike you’re out’ rule should be reexamined. But I was alone on that. It’s worked out for the best, however. Janell and I are, as my mother used to say, making lemonade out of lemons.”

  Kristin was typing furiously into her laptop. Meryl looked around the room frantically, wondering how to intervene.

  “Kristin, maybe you want to get started with Amy? I know she might have to get back to the office,” Meryl said. “Hugh, can I speak to you for a minute?”

  She dragged him into his office and closed the door.

  “What the hell? Why would you get into all that? You want the whole world to know you were fired from your job?”

  “I’m not ashamed of what happened at Yardley, Meryl. I’m sorry you are—but that’s really your issue. Kristin wants to write about the girls because they’re real people—not celebrities. So we’re real people with real problems. And it’s not even a problem—it’s all worked out for the best. Why do you feel the need to control everything? We’re a family, and that’s what they want to see.”

  “Sure! Why don’t I just tell them how my mother hates you because you told me to have an abortion and we didn’t raise our kids Jewish. Since we’re being real!”

  A knock on the door. “Um, Meryl?”

  Kristin. Oh God. Had she heard them?

  Meryl slowly opened the door.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Kristin said. “I’m just looking for Jo? Our photographer wants a group shot.”

  “Of course. Let me find her.”

  With no luck in the bedrooms or kitchen, Meryl finally found the bathroom in the hallway outside the bedrooms locked.

  “Jo? Are you in there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you okay?”

  A pause, and the sound of the door unlocking.

  Jo opened it a few inches, looking pale—almost green.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” Jo sat on the floor.

  “Are you sick?”

  “I think I’m just stressed.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know if I should go through with this whole thing.”

  Meryl felt herself go pale too. “What ‘whole thing’? The wedding?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jo, it’s normal to be stressed in the months leading up to the wedding. I think Meg is feeling the same way. Even Amy doesn’t seem herself. But you have to stay focused on the love that brought you to make the commitment in the first place.”

  “Mom, I’m sorry, but I have to break the engagement. I can’t—” Jo leaned over suddenly and retched into the toilet.

  “You are sick, poor thing.”

  “I keep waiting for it to pass, but it doesn’t. I’ve been nauseated off and on for weeks. And I’m so tired, Mom. All I want to do is sleep.”

  “For weeks?”

  Jo nodded.

  Meryl reached for the towel rack to steady herself. She could feel herself back in her dorm room, saying those exact words to Hugh.

  “Jo,” she said slowly. “You’re not stressed. You’re not sick. You’re pregnant.”

  One Month Until the Wedding

  twenty-four

  Hunter Cross read from her laptop, glancing up every few seconds to glare at Meg after particularly offensive passages. It was as if she had the People magazine piece memorized.

  “‘While the three sisters have had a picture-perfect road to the altar, the father of the bride, sixty-year-old Hugh Becker, has had a bumpier time of late. He recently was fired from his twenty-year teaching position at the prestigious Yardley School when he stood up against what he believes to be an unfairly dogmatic policy toward academic cheating.’”

  Hunter closed her laptop with an aggressive slam. “Do you understand,” she said to Meg, “that we cannot afford a whiff of scandal right now?”

  Meg looked at Stowe, crossing her arms. To say she felt ambushed was a gross understatement. She thought he’d called her to the Campion campaign headquarters for a strategy session—not a crucifixion over the People online article—which in her opinion was completely positive.

  “That comment would make sense, Hunter, if there were any ‘whiff of scandal’ in this piece.”

  “Your father was fired from his job—essentially for defending academic dishonesty. Don’t you think that’s something you should have mentioned to us ahead of time so we could do damage control? If you’re going to be a member of this team—”

  Meg cut her off. “Correction, Hunter—I am a member of this team. More importantly, I’m a member of this family. Which is more than you can say.
So why don’t you adjust your attitude.”

  “This is extremely unprofessional,” Hunter said to Stowe, packing her laptop into her oversized Hermès bag. “And I think Reed would agree with me.” She stalked out of the office.

  “Thanks for the ambush!” Meg said to Stowe.

  “I could say the same to you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me your father was fired? You said he was on sabbatical to finish his book.”

  “That’s what my parents told me! And frankly, it’s none of my business and none of yours.”

  Stowe inhaled deeply. “I’m sorry, babe, come here. Please calm down.” He reached for her hand, and she begrudgingly gave it to him. She leaned on the edge of his desk, avoiding eye contact. Surprisingly, she felt tears in her eyes.

  “Every time I think things are back on track, that they’re finally clicking, something happens to ruin it,” she said, her voice wavering.

  “Nothing’s ruined,” he said. “This is just politics. It’s a game, and you’re learning to play it. And part of that game is knowing that in this stage of things, everything matters. Everything is our business, because the whole world is watching my father. I know it’s an adjustment. But know that I love you and we’re on the same team.”

  “It doesn’t feel that way. It feels like you and Hunter are the team. And I keep walking in from the outside.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I don’t like her.”

  “Okay, I get that. Loud and clear. But did you like everyone you worked with at Poliglot? It’s just a job, Meg. And it’s going to be great for you. For us.”

  He kissed her and she felt her body relax, the tension ebbing.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my dad’s job situation. But I really didn’t know until the day of the interview. And even then it didn’t seem like a big deal—at least, not the way Hunter is making it out to be. My father is a good man. He cares so much about his students. He stood up for something he thinks is right. I don’t see how that can hurt Reed.”

  “Well, it will get spun. The way Hunter spoke about it—she was just relaying the way the other side will talk about it. That’s her job. None of this is personal.” He stroked the lock of her hair that came loose from her ponytail.