The Wedding Sisters Read online

  * * *

  In the morning Jo awoke with an instant sense of well-being. She couldn’t, at first, recall exactly why. And then it all came rushing back to her.

  She turned over to look at Leigh, sleeping inches away from her in the big bed at the Soho Grand. The place where it all began, where she finally realized how she really felt.

  Jo spooned against her, and Leigh responded by reaching for her arms and pulling them tighter. “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Jo said. “Late, probably.”

  They had not gone to sleep until three in the morning. It was as if they wanted to cram a year’s worth of relationship into one night. “I just want to be at that place where we’re together—and that’s it,” said Jo.

  “We are together. But there’s still a lot to get to know—to figure out.”

  “I’ve already figured out a lot,” said Jo. “I won’t be in a relationship where I have to hide it.”

  “I don’t want that either. I think that’s part of what last night was all about. I had to really blow things up in a big way so I couldn’t chicken out!”

  “Well, that was big, for sure.”

  Leigh had told her about Meryl’s impromptu little speech just before the ceremony. “It was weird,” Leigh said. “It was as if someone were telling me something I was hearing for the first time, yet knew all along. I was barely thinking when I walked down that aisle. I just knew that you and I still had so much to talk about—and I didn’t want that conversation to be over.”

  Jo reached for her phone. “I’m almost afraid to turn it on,” she said. She hadn’t spoken to Toby since he stormed away from the ceremony. The count and countess had whisked him off in a car by the time she went looking. And Jo had been so caught up in the moment—a moment she didn’t want to end—she hadn’t let herself think about the fallout.

  She regretted hurting Toby. But she had told him she didn’t love him in that way. She had told him that from the beginning, and he had insisted it didn’t matter. Well, he had been wrong.

  But she was still carrying his baby. There was no grand gesture on Leigh’s part that could change that.

  “Don’t turn on the phone. I’m not ready for reality,” Leigh said.

  “I know, but my mother is probably having a heart attack today. She was cool about it last night, but now that she’s had some quiet and time to think about it, she must be losing it. Not to mention the whole People magazine deal fell apart. The deal was we all had to walk down the aisle.”

  “Oh, please—like this isn’t an even juicer story for them?”

  As soon as Jo’s phone was on, it vibrated. Eight messages. The most recent was from Meg.

  Her sisters. She’d barely even had time to think about what they must be going through. Why had Meg bailed on Stowe? And had Andy found out about Amy’s cheating on him? Meg and Amy had both spent the night at their parents’ apartment, since clearly they couldn’t very well go back to the homes they’d shared with the men they left at the altar.

  “I have to stop by my parents’ later,” she said. “You know we’re the only ones who are happy this morning.”

  “And I am happy,” Leigh said, propping herself up on her pillows and taking Jo’s hand. “Even though I’m unemployed.”

  “Maybe it’s time to start your own wedding-planning business,” Jo said.

  “Maybe,” she said. “I did plan the most talked-about wedding of the year.”

  “I wouldn’t say most talked about—”

  “Jo, I hate to break it to you, love—this wedding will live on in New York gossip-column infamy.”

  “Ugh. You’re right. I should call my sisters.” Jo dialed Meg.

  She answered immediately, sobbing.

  “Meg—I can’t understand you. Just calm down. It’s going to be okay. You guys can work it out. Stowe loves you. It’s not like—”

  “No! Stop,” Meg said. “Didn’t you get my message?”

  “I didn’t listen to it.” Her stomach tightened. “What is it?”

  “Gran’s dead.”

  * * *

  It was Hugh who’d found Rose unresponsive in her bed.

  Meryl slept late, completely wrung out—emotionally and physically.

  But Hugh was incapable of sleeping in, so when he awoke, he decided to talk to Rose—to thank her for making the disastrous wedding worthwhile in at least one respect. He had felt, as he told Meryl the night before, that he finally had her mother’s blessing.

  He called 911 before he woke Meryl.

  When the paramedics arrived, they ushered Meryl and Hugh out of the room, firing a litany of questions at them: “What medications was she taking? Did she have a heart condition? High blood pressure?”

  While she sat on the couch, trying to stay calm and answer the questions as accurately as possible, with Hugh beside her and holding her hand, the other paramedics emerged from the bedroom, grim faced.

  “I’m sorry—there’s nothing we can do.”

  Meryl screamed, a bloodcurdling cry that finally roused Meg and Amy from their sleep.

  Hugh stood up. “Can you give us some idea of what happened?”

  “We’re not sure,” the young man said. To Meryl, he looked like a kid. “At that age, these things happen. Sometimes they’re just ready to go.”

  Meryl held on to Hugh. Sometimes they’re just ready to go.

  twenty-nine

  By Jewish custom, the mourning period would last seven days and nights, a period called “sitting shiva.”

  Since Meg and her sisters had been raised pretty much agnostic, to see her mother embrace such a traditional ritual of mourning was surprising.

  They would stay at their parents’ apartment all week, day and night, while friends and family stopped by to pay their respects, bringing them food and company. It was nice in theory—the family would not be left to mourn alone. But three hours into the first day, she wondered how she would last a week.

  Of course she was mourning Gran—she was bereft. It was the first death of anyone close to her, and Meg knew that at age twenty-eight, she was lucky in that regard. But she felt claustrophobic in her parents’ apartment, an odd sense that on the Monopoly board of life, she had been sent back to the starting point.

  It was not lost on her that the day of the funeral was the day she and Stowe would have set off on their honeymoon—if the honeymoon hadn’t been usurped by the Texas campaign trip, that is.

  Had she done the right thing? She felt she had done the only thing she could. She didn’t want to wake up five years from now, with children, alone in a marriage. At least now, she could start over. And she was starting over: with her career. Someday, with her love life—although that seemed impossible to imagine right now. And, in some ways, even her family life. Somehow, over the past nine months, the long-standing dynamics of her family had shifted in a way she couldn’t fully pinpoint. Her parents seemed closer. She and Amy had a better understanding of one another. And Jo—well, Jo was Jo. But Meg also felt she had somehow lost her identity in the mix. She was no longer the one who had it all together—who could do no wrong. Now she was just as much of a mess—if not more of one—than the rest of them.

  The front door opened. Her mother had left it unlocked so guests could easily arrive and depart. Surprisingly, it was Cliff from Longview.

  “I hope I’m not intruding,” he said, handing her a tray of cookies from Bouchon Bakery.

  “No! Not at all. Come on in.”

  “I read about your grandmother in the paper this morning, and I just had to pay my respects. Your poor mother—what a week.”

  “This is so lovely of you, Cliff.” It was hard to believe that her life was such that her grandmother’s death made the front page of the New York Post. And the news had brought out the oddest assortment of well-wishers: Janell South and her older sister, her father’s new literary agent, the chancellor of Yardley. Baskets of baked goods and trays of cold cuts had arrived from People ma
gazine, Marchesa, and E! television. It seemed the wedding might have been a failure, but people were still banking on the Wedding Sisters.

  “Hugh, I don’t want people with their phones out. No photos, no texting. All I need is for someone to live-tweet our shiva,” Meryl had said that morning, covering the mirrors. Apparently, that was also part of the shiva tradition—no vanity. A dramatic turn from the past nine months, which had been all about how they looked, what they were wearing, whom they were dating.

  They had been brought down to earth, and Meg wasn’t sorry for it. She’d just wished it had happened some other way.

  “Hon, relax. It’s just family and friends,” said Hugh.

  Four days. Was that all it had been since she’d seen Stowe? Four days ago, she was minutes away from becoming his wife. And now she was likely never to speak to him again.

  Not a call, not a text, not a word since her outburst at the altar. Their only contact with the Campion family had been an e-mail from one of Tippy’s assistants about the logistics of returning the wedding gifts.

  He hated her, she was certain. From his point of view, she had just bailed out. She had wanted something he couldn’t give, and when he told her his limitations—or shown them, really—she had blown the whole thing up in spectacular fashion. And most unforgivable—at least in the Campion world—she had done so publicly.

  It had all been too good to be true. He had been too good to be true: too handsome, too intelligent, too successful. Everyone said they were the perfect couple, and she had believed the hype. Maybe this was what happened to you when things went pretty damn smoothly for twenty-eight years; you didn’t know to look over your shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  But she loved him—had fallen in love with him that first night under the California stars at the Standard Hotel. Maybe that one magical night was all it should have been, and everything since had been her fault—her hubris for thinking she could have a lifetime of that magic.

  The apartment was stifling.

  Meg slipped out the front door, closing it behind her and leaning against it. The hallway felt ten degrees cooler and was mercifully quiet. She closed her eyes until the ping of the elevator arriving down the hall forced her back to attention.

  She turned to go back inside.

  “Meg!” Stowe walked toward her, wheeling a travel bag behind him.

  “Oh my God. What are you doing here? I thought you were in Texas.”

  “I was.” He stopped, awkwardly, a few feet away from her.

  Meg didn’t know whether she should hug him or keep her distance. There was too much to process—her overwhelming joy at seeing him, her utter shock at seeing him, and her fear that he showed up out of propriety yet hated her for leaving him.

  “I came as soon as I heard the news about your grandmother. I’m so sorry.”

  “Stowe, I don’t know what to say. You didn’t have to do that. I mean, considering…”

  “I know I didn’t have to. I wanted to.”

  Meg gave a bitter laugh. “You know, the irony is that when we were together, you never would have left a campaign event to be with me.”

  “That’s not true. I know you felt that way, and yes, there were times when I put my parents’ wishes first, but I was wrong. I realize that now.”

  “Stowe…” She glanced back at the apartment.

  “Don’t run away from me, Meg. Not today. I’m standing before you, telling you that I heard you. I heard you three days ago, standing at the altar. I wish I’d heard you sooner. I wish it hadn’t happened like that. But it doesn’t have to end like that.”

  “It doesn’t?” she whispered.

  “No. Not if we don’t let it.” He pulled her to him, and she held on to him as if her life depended on it, choking back sobs.

  “But your mother hates me,” she said, pulling away and wiping her eyes with the tissue she had folded in her sleeve. She hadn’t been without a tissue handy for three days straight.

  “She doesn’t hate you.”

  “She does.”

  “Well, she’ll just have to get over it. And didn’t you tell me your grandmother didn’t talk to your father for years? That worked out okay in the end, didn’t it?”

  She burst into tears again. “Yeah.”

  He took both her hands in his and got down on one knee. “Let’s give this a go, Meg. I’m not ready to give up on us. Are you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “You were right. So let’s see what we can be when we put each other and our relationship first. Do you want to give it a go?”

  “I do,” she whispered.

  thirty

  It was a day that made Meryl miss her mother.

  Standing on the terrace, looking at the autumn trees framing the East River with their leaves turning pale gold, she could almost feel her. On this momentous occasion, there was the sense that Rose was with them. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. But so what? Meryl would just have to wish.

  “Mom, we’ve been looking all over for you. Come on—it’s time.”

  Meg appeared, cradling Jo’s two-month-old daughter in her arms.

  “Meg! You’re in your dress. You shouldn’t be holding Rose. You know she’s been spitting up all day. Where’s Jo?”

  “Jo and Leigh are dealing with the caterers. Something came late or is missing … I don’t know. But Olympia wants us all in our places.”

  “Give me the baby,” Meryl said, reaching for her granddaughter, pressing her lips to her tiny head covered in feathery pale hair.

  She followed Meg inside, where the bridal party—consisting of Jo, Leigh, and Amy—waited in the living room. The groom’s party consisted only of Stowe’s youngest brother, Sutton. His father and Cutter, at a campaign event, declined to attend. Tippy, at the last minute, was a surprise appearance. Meryl supposed if there was anything that could rise above politics and ambition, it was motherhood.

  The rest of the twenty guests—including Janell, now a freshman at Penn, Hugh’s book publisher and publicist, and Toby, Jo’s friendly coparent—gathered around the small chuppah made of birch branches. Leigh and Jo, working together now in their new company Leigh & Jo Weddings, designed it themselves.

  Amy, the only one dressed extravagantly, in a dress designed by her new boss, Diane von Furstenberg, marched over to Meryl in a huff. “We can’t start yet—Dean isn’t here!” she said. Dean, the latest in a seemingly endless string of outrageously attractive but completely casual boyfriends.

  “Amy, your sister has waited long enough for this moment. She’s not going to wait a minute longer for Dean. And I suggest you text him and tell him to wait twenty minutes so he doesn’t interrupt the ceremony.”

  “So annoying,” Amy muttered.

  Some things never changed, and there was comfort in that.

  “Mom, I can take her,” Jo said, reaching for her daughter.

  Before handing her off, Meryl breathed in that special baby scent, thinking for the umpteenth time that she’d never known love like this. It was different than with her own daughters. Not stronger, but somehow richer. More poignant. There was the overwhelming sense, holding the incredible bundle of new life, of time marching on. Of the continuum of family. Of being part of something greater than herself—something she helped build that would, like the seasons, change but always renew.

  “Everyone, if you could please gather around,” said Olympia.

  There was no aisle to walk down. Hugh stood by Meryl’s side.

  “You look more beautiful today than you did on our wedding day,” he whispered. Stowe and Meg walked hand in hand, taking their places in front of Olympia.

  “Friends and family, we are so thankful you could join us here today to celebrate the union of Meg and Stowe. As you all know, it was a little bit bumpy getting to this afternoon.” When the laughter settled, Olympia said, “But I have rarely seen true love without a bit of drama. It keeps life interesting, does it not?”

  Meryl not
iced Jo and Leigh exchange an intimate, satisfied glance, while Amy checked her phone—no doubt texting her date.

  Stowe and Meg beamed at one another. “I’m ready,” she said with a smile, glancing at Meryl. In that moment, Meg was her little girl playing dress-up again. She blinked back tears.

  “Well, one down. Two to go,” Meryl whispered to Hugh, squeezing his arm.

  “Please—let’s not think about that right this minute. Let’s just enjoy the fact that for now, we did good, didn’t we?”

  “Yes,” she said, reaching for his hand. “We did.”

  Reading Group Guide

  1. In the book’s opening, Meryl is a young mother surrounded by the chaotic delight of her family. How has her feeling about her role as mother changed by the time her daughters are grown and planning their weddings?

  2. As Meryl anxiously gets ready to meet her future in-laws, her husband says, “Remember, it’s not about you.” Is Meryl making the wedding about herself, or is she really doing everything in the best interest of her daughter?

  3. Out of the three sisters, the oldest, Meg, is the first to get engaged. Would the engagements that follow for Amy and Jo have happened if not for Meg’s wedding plans? Why or why not?

  4. How are the stresses of the Becker family’s wedding plans universal, and how are they unique to this particular family?

  5. How do the traditional expectations and etiquette of wedding planning affect the families? Should such rules still apply in modern times?

  6. Meryl has always had a strained relationship with her own mother, Rose. Is Meryl at all responsible for their rift? Why or why not? In what ways does the wedding planning further push them apart, and in what ways does it bring them closer together?

  7. Meryl is upset not only with the timing of Hugh’s work crisis, but also with the position he takes on the controversy. Is she right to be annoyed with him, or should she be more supportive? Do you empathize with Hugh’s stance at his school, or is he being reckless?

  8. When Meryl finds herself drawn to a man from her youth, is it nostalgia for the past or is it her frustration with her present? How do Hugh’s actions and attitude contribute to her newfound friendship?