The Wedding Sisters Page 28
The weather, thankfully, was picture perfect: bright blue clear skies, shining sun, a gentle breeze. And as the car pulled up to Longview, she could see that it was in glorious full bloom, as Cliff had promised.
She headed toward the house, Hugh following close behind with their garment bags. In the distance, she heard the hammering of last-minute construction.
Leigh was halfway down the lush green front lawn before Meryl noticed her.
“How’s everything going?” Meryl said.
“Under control. There just seems to be some confusion about the bouquets. I know it’s my job to smooth over this sort of thing, but sometimes there’s just no substitute for Mom.”
“Of course, Leigh. And you’ve done a fantastic job. I know I was resistant at first—”
“That’s one way of putting it.” She smiled.
“Yes, well, I’m the first to admit now that I don’t know what I would have done without you. I know my daughters feel the same.”
An odd look crossed Leigh’s face. “Well, just doing my job. But thank you.”
Cliff greeted them at the front door. He was dressed in a seersucker suit with a deep purple calla lily in his lapel.
“Don’t you look nice!” said Meryl. And she started to feel the first tingle of optimism.
“I got a sneak peek at the brides, and they are perfection.”
“I can’t wait to see them myself! Heading up there right now.”
“Actually, first—can you just take a look at the bouquets?” asked Leigh.
Meryl bit down her impatience and followed her to the kitchen, where the source of the problem was being refrigerated.
“I brought them out for some photos, and Jo insists this is not what she asked for. She said she wanted the ranunculus.”
Jo’s lily of the valley bouquet, wrapped in fern, was exactly what Meryl remembered her ordering.
“The other two are fine?”
“Yes.” Leigh showed her Meg’s bouquet, mini calla lilies, the stems wrapped in chartreuse silk ribbon, and Amy’s ranunculus wrapped in a green leaf secured with pearl pins.
Meryl sighed. “I’ll talk to Jo. Where is she? Upstairs?”
Leigh nodded, and Cliff escorted Meryl up the central staircase. He consulted his phone. “The band is here. I’m going to show them where to set up. You should get dressed. The family photographer and the People photographer are battling it out for time, and you’re not camera ready, my dear.”
* * *
Meryl hurried down the hall and knocked on the closed door.
“What?” barked Jo.
“It’s Mom.”
No reply. Meryl tried the knob and the door opened. Jo stood by the window. From behind, in her skinny satin pants and short cocktail dress, her hair nearly to her waist, she looked like a teenager. But when she turned, Meryl’s eyes went straight to the unmistakable curve of her belly.
“I never should have worn this,” she said, tugging at the dress. “If I had known I was pregnant—”
“Nonsense! You look beautiful!” Meryl picked up the white floral wreath from the bed and handed it to her. She had said all along she wanted to wear flowers instead of a veil. “I want to see this on you.”
“Not now. I can’t deal. Did you see the bouquet? I didn’t ask for those flowers! The bouquet was supposed to match these flowers.”
“What are these flowers?”
“How the hell should I know? This is not my thing!”
“Hon, I was there at the florist. You did agree to the lily of the valley.”
Jo turned and looked out the window. “I can see the garden from here. Are they … Is that a chuppah they’re setting up?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Because Gran—”
“Yes. Now, hon, I have to get dressed. Do you want me to try to get a last-minute replacement bouquet?”
“No. I don’t want to carry a bouquet.”
Meryl, about to protest, thought better of it. The time for fighting over things, fighting for things, was over. All that mattered was that Meg, Amy, and Jo were walking down that aisle in two hours.
“Mom, who are those people filming down there?”
Meryl moved toward the window. The distance was a blur without her glasses.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s not the People photographers.”
“I’ll go check it out.” She kissed her cheek. “Go meet your sisters downstairs. Paz is waiting.”
Meryl let herself out of the room, and nearly colliding with Meg, let out a yelp.
* * *
She was a vision in head-to-toe lace, her gold hair loose to brush her shoulders, the ends curved ever so slightly inward toward her collarbone. Her cheeks blushed pink with excitement—or maybe it was the work of the makeup artist. But somehow she looked incredibly young and radiant and elegant and sophisticated all at once. Meryl’s eyes brimmed with tears—her daughter was the most perfect bride she’d ever seen.
“Oh, my baby—look at you!”
“Mom—don’t! It’s too early to cry. And I just got false eyelashes put on.”
“False eyelashes?”
“Yes—just a few single ones on the top. See?” She leaned toward Meryl, her pinky finger hovering near her eyelid.
“The photographer is ready,” Meryl said.
“Listen—I need to talk to you.”
“Oh God. Don’t tell me there’s another problem. Jo just informed me she’s not carrying a bouquet. The photographer really wants symmetry when you girls walk down the aisle—”
“She’s not upset about the bouquet.”
“Yes, she is. I just spoke to her.”
Meg put her finger to her lips and gestured for Meryl to follow her into one of the bedrooms. Once inside, Meg kept her back against the door.
“Don’t press your gown—”
“Mom, listen to me. Last night, before dinner—before the whole article fiasco—I found Jo crying in the bathroom.”
“It’s just pregnancy hormones, honey. I mean, planning a wedding is stressful enough—”
“It’s not pregnancy hormones. She’s in love with someone else.”
Meryl felt her stomach knot. “She’s still upset about Caroline?”
Meg shook her head. “She’s in love with Leigh.”
“Leigh? Leigh who?”
“Leigh—the wedding planner!”
Meryl sat down heavily on the antique four-poster bed. It creaked and groaned under her weight. “In love with her? How? They barely know each other.”
“Oh, they know each other. A lot better than any of us realized.”
“Okay—just wait a second. So Jo and Leigh have been having an affair?”
“Apparently.”
“Is Leigh asking her not to get married?”
“No. From what I can tell, Leigh is telling Jo to forget about her and do the practical thing. I told Jo she doesn’t have to do this—she can call it off. But she wouldn’t listen to me.”
“Oh my God.”
“She can’t marry him, Mom. I mean, things aren’t perfect with Stowe. But I love him—I’m in love with him. There’s no one else for me. How can she walk down that aisle and say those vows if she doesn’t feel the same about Toby?”
“I’ll talk to her,” Meryl said, but it was an automatic response. Was she really going to walk out there and tell her daughter to be a runaway bride? It was unthinkable.
“She won’t listen to you,” said Meg.
“Meryl, I hate to interrupt, but I need you for a second.”
Leigh.
Meryl tried to assume a normal facial expression. She tried not to blurt out, Are you in love with my daughter? She just had to hold everything together. Keep the wedding on the tracks.
It wasn’t her place to second-guess her daughter’s complicated emotions, or to tell her to turn her back on her fiancé. Jo was an adult now—she would have to make adult decisions, and live with them. Everyone did.
“Meryl, we have a situation in the garden. Could you please go check on what’s going on? We sent a staff member to talk to them but—”
“Them? Them who?”
“The documentary filmmakers.”
* * *
Amy looked at herself in the full-length mirror. The dress, with its tiny seed pearls and princess skirt, was a fantasy come to life. Her hair, in a chignon, was exactly how she’d imagined it on her wedding day, ever since she was a little girl. The reflection even caught the window behind her, out of which she could see the beautiful walled garden, where in less than an hour, guests would take their seats.
Amy couldn’t sit in her dress, and so with time to kill before the photographs, she had been left to pace the bedroom. There was no TV, no computer. Just a stack of magazines and a coffee table book on English gardens.
Left alone with her thoughts, she couldn’t ignore the nagging, gnawing feeling. Just wedding-day jitters, she told herself. Still, she wanted a distraction. So she reached for one of the magazines, Vanity Fair, and flipped through it.
Marcus smiled up at her, shirtless, wearing only a pair of Jeffrey Bruce distressed jeans.
That’s when she knew what she needed to do to put an end to the nagging feeling.
She opened the door and called for Leigh. “Can you please get Andy for me? I need to talk to him for a sec.”
And then Amy waited, telling herself she was doing the right thing.
The minutes ticked by like hours until finally, a sharp knock.
Andy.
“Hey,” she said, opening the door.
“Wow. You look … You look incredible, Ame. But I thought I wasn’t supposed to see you in the dress. My dad wouldn’t even show me his sketches. Holy shit, that thing is amazing. That skirt is big. Was that your idea, or his?”
“I said I wanted a ball gown,” she said, swallowing hard. Now that he was there, in his wedding tux, smiling at her, the impulse to talk to him seemed like a bad one.
He kissed her on the cheek. “You okay? I have to get back down there—that People photographer has us jumping through hoops. Not literally, obviously.”
“Yeah. Okay. The thing is—I need to talk to you.”
Andy glanced at the door, then back at her. “Right now?”
“Yeah. I’d say let’s sit, but … I can’t sit.” She hesitated, but knew there was no time for stalling. “I have to tell you something. It’s been weighing on me, and I can’t walk down that aisle without—”
“You hooked up with that model,” he said bluntly.
She gasped. Even though she’d planned on confessing, even though those very words had been on the tip of her tongue, hearing them come out of his mouth was like a slap in the face.
“You knew?”
“I heard rumors. Fashion is a small world,” he said. “I tried to, um, ignore them.”
“Why? Why didn’t you confront me?”
“I guess I didn’t want to hear it from you. I wanted to keep it as rumors.”
Amy sat on the bed, not caring that the crinoline crunched underneath her. “Oh, Andy. I’m so sorry. It was nothing—really. I don’t even know why I did it.” She couldn’t stand to look at him. She felt tears threatening to undo her eye makeup.
“You’re going to mess up your dress,” he said.
“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”
“What do you want me to say, Amy?”
A quick knock at the door, and Meg called from the hallway. “Amy—the photographer is ready for us.”
“Go,” Andy said. “Everyone’s waiting.”
* * *
Scott Sobel, crashing her daughters’ wedding. With a camera crew.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she yelled, marching up to Scott.
“We’re just getting some B roll and then we’ll be out of your way,” he said, barely looking at her, snapping his fingers at one of his crew and pointing to the chuppah.
“This is a private event—you can’t be here.”
“This property is open to the public until one P.M. today.”
Another guy advanced to the front row of seating, getting a shot of the view from where the officiant would be standing.
“I’ve got this, Meryl,” said Hugh.
In her outrage, she hadn’t seen him cutting through a row of chairs, knocking a few over in his haste. He took her arm, moving her aside before ripping the expensive-looking Sony camcorder from Scott’s hands and smashing it to the ground.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Scott yelled. “That’s destruction of property.”
“This is my daughters’ wedding day. Get the hell out of here.”
Scott turned to another cameraman. “Keep shooting.”
Meryl thought she knew her husband. She thought, after thirty years, there were no surprises left. But Hugh, seeing the second cameraman panning his camcorder up and down the aisle, took a few steps toward Scott and punched him in the face.
“Hugh!” Meryl instinctively grabbed him, holding him back. It was what women did when their men got primal in movies. She just never thought she’d ever play that role with her cerebral, amiable husband.
Scott, on the ground, his hand covering the spot where Hugh landed the blow, looked up in disbelief. Then anger. Then fury. “I’ll see you in court,” Scott said.
“Back at you,” said Hugh. “I hear libel can be very costly.”
By then, Cliff and Leigh had rushed down the lawn, followed by Reed’s security.
Meryl took Hugh’s hand. “Let’s go,” she said.
Hugh didn’t move, didn’t seem to hear her. He was breathing hard. She moved in front of him, her back to Scott, and looked into his eyes.
“Hugh…” She squeezed his hand. And then everything caught up with her, the good and the bad, the past and the present and the future all colliding in a crushing wave of emotion. She started to cry.
Hugh put his arm around her, steering her away from the commotion as the security team hustled Scott and his crew off the property.
Together, they walked up the aisle, hand in hand, back to the house.
* * *
“Three generations of beauty. How fabulous!” Paz said.
It was warmer than Meg had anticipated, and after forty minutes of Paz photographing her with her sisters, and then the three of them with their mother, and then with their mother and grandmother, she was dripping with sweat and ready for a complete makeup and hair redo.
“Stop your sweet-talking and just take the photo. I’m roasting out here,” said Rose.
Meg noted that her gran’s face was pale and shiny with perspiration.
“We need to take a break,” Meg said.
“Okay, ladies—that’s a wrap.”
Finally dismissed, Meg walked Gran back to the house. Then, in the cool privacy of the second-floor bedroom, she took off her dress and changed into a robe so she could cool down.
“I don’t see why we couldn’t do the photography after the ceremony,” she grumbled to the makeup artist.
“You’re going to do plenty after—with your new husband,” said the makeup artist.
New husband. Meg smiled.
Someone knocked on the door.
“It’s me,” said Amy. “Open up.”
The makeup artist pulled open the door. “I’m almost ready for you.”
“Okay, great. Meg, listen—Reed’s being a pain in the ass.”
“What?” she said, trying not to move her face.
“He won’t pose in any photographs with Dad.”
Meg turned to her, and the makeup artist groaned in protest. “Why the hell not?”
“I don’t know! Stowe’s talking to him now.”
Meg jumped out of her seat and slipped her feet into the nearest pair of mules she had lying round.
“Where are you going?”
“To see what the hell is going on!”
“It’s bad luck to see your husb
and before the wedding.”
“That’s only if you’re in your dress. And the only bad luck is if his father doesn’t get in the damn photos.”
Meg took the stairs two at a time, rushing out the south terrace to the lawn, where Paz had the cameras and lights set up. Sure enough, her father, Jeffrey, and the count were sitting on a bench. Reed was nowhere in sight.
She found Stowe on the sidelines, with Hunter hovering nearby, of course.
“Stowe! A word, please.” She beckoned him over, and he followed her back onto the patio. Hunter followed until Meg yelled, “Stay out of this, Hunter! I told you not to come, and I will call security and have you escorted off the property.”
“Jesus, Meg. Calm down. What’s wrong?”
“Why won’t your father pose for the People photos? You know we have a deal with them.”
Stowe sighed, running his hand through his hair. He looked so handsome in his Jeffrey Bruce tux, a single mini calla lily pinned to his lapel to match her bouquet. As usual, things with him were almost perfect. But today, “almost” wasn’t good enough.
“Just let it go, Meg.”
“Just let what go?”
“Look—my dad can’t be in any photographs that can be used against him—twisted around by tabloids. That article that posted last night about your father and the high school student—”
“Are you kidding me? You know that’s all bullshit.”
“Of course I know! But it’s exactly the type of salacious thing my dad has to stay very far away from. It’s a sensitive juncture in this campaign, Meg. He doesn’t even have the Republican nomination yet. After Texas, things will be a little more secure—”
“No! It’s not right. This is our wedding day. This has nothing to do with politics. This is a family day—a family event.”
“Babe, I know. And for me—for us—it’s about becoming real family. And part of being in my family is rolling with some of the inconvenient aspects of living in the public eye. I told you before—it’s just a game. It has nothing to do with what’s real—with us. I love you. My dad loves you. And he likes your dad—he does. This is just a minor inconvenience in the big picture of things. In the big picture of what I hope is a very long, amazing life together. I can’t wait to walk down that aisle, say our vows in front of all these people, and wake up tomorrow as husband and wife. Please, please focus on what’s important. Okay?”