“Are you sending her off to school?” Alexander asked seriously.
“Oh, bloody hell no!” Merlyn shook his head, “She’s staying with me! I’ll raise my own daughter, thank you!”
“Yeah,” Oliver agreed, “Yeah, so will we. I don’t know how my parents did it. I can’t stand the idea of not seeing them through school.”
“I don’t think I could send mine off. Not Natalie anyway,” Alex had a faraway look on his face, “I couldn’t tolerate it. Although some days I consider it with Nigel. I think it might be better for him, more structure and discipline, if he doesn’t straighten up when he’s older, anyway.”
“Nigel’s a good boy,” I told him. “He’s going to be fine.”
“I hope,” Alexander agreed, “He’s just a little hot headed.”
That evoked a laugh. “Nothing like his father, I assume?” Lance, who had no children, finally found his way into the conversation.
“No, he’s much better than I ever was.”
“Isn’t that the truth, Boyo?” Oliver nodded in agreement.
The other Bennington guests were friends of Lucy, two I didn’t even know and one I only vaguely recalled. Laurie McGhee remembered me, though. “Silvia Cotton! You look wonderful!” She kissed my cheek like we’d been lifelong friends, “It’s good to see you again!”
“You, too, Laurie. How have you been?”
“I’ve been good! Oh, I have to tell my sister Margaret how wonderful you look! Actually, let’s get a photo!”
“Why a photo?” I asked.
She giggled, “I just want to put it to her is all. She was always so jealous of you! Oh, my, she started so many rumours!”
“Wait…Margaret McGhee? Peggy McGhee is your sister? Oh, yes! I do remember you! You shared a room with Lucy her second year! Laurie! Oh, my, you’ve changed! Yes, your sister hated me! She started all those rumours?”
“A fair amount of them! Oh, she was so in love with Oliver! She had a picture of him, yeah? She kept it in her room. She was convinced that she’d have him that year, but you came and stole him away! It wouldn’t have ever happened! He never liked her! ”
I shook my head. “I used to always hear her say she thought for sure we’d broken up.”
“Wishful thinking on her part! But not to worry! It’ll tell her you and Oliver are still happily together,” Laurie laughed wickedly, “And that you have lovely children, too, little ones, and you weren’t pregnant at school. She’ll die! She had a fit when I told her that Lucy was marrying Alexander. She said, ‘What is it with those Cotton girls getting everything they want?’ She’s still not married. She lives in Merryside with a cat!”
“Now that is sad,” I agreed, “Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I need to go have a peek at my little sister.”
“Not at all! It’s her day!”
Lucy looked like an angel with her strawberry hair swept up into sparkling pins. She wore our mother’s wedding dress. It was very ornately embroidered and detailed with pearls, a white silk gown that swept the ground as she moved. On her wrist dangled a bracelet and around her neck she wore a thin gold chain with a simple teardrop pendant. “How do I look?” She asked, turning from the mirror.
“Perfect,” I told her honestly.
“Is it time?” She drew a deep breath. “It’s time, isn’t it?”
“If you’re ready.”
“I am,” She nodded. Dad took her arm and led her to the aisle.
Alexander was waiting at the altar. When he saw my sister his eyes positively lit up. He grinned like a boy with a brand new bicycle. “You look amazing,” I heard him tell her as she took his hand.
“So do you,” She replied She squirmed happily in her shoes, “Wow!”
Neither Lucy nor Alexander stopped smiling at each other, not even once, not for one second, the whole time they were being married. Alexander looked astonishingly like Oliver as he took his vows, “Lucy, I’m not good with words. I usually choose the wrong ones, but I can’t do that right now, because I’m standing here and I’m looking into your beautiful face and I can’t remember what I planned to say. You came along and you set everything that was wrong in my life right. I’m going to spend the rest of my life with Lucy Cotton and that’s odd and unexpected and, mind, it’s completely mad to think that it would have ever happened. But it’s so right, yeah?” He started to laugh, “I don’t even know what to say! I love you so much!” He leaned over and kissed her quickly, “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but right with you.”
“You weren’t supposed to kiss her,” The priest whispered.
“Oh! Sorry!” Alexander whispered back.
A ripple of laughter spread throughout the church.
Ana dabbed her eyes. Whether she was crying over the joy that her son had found true love after a failed marriage or out of relief that she finally got to go to a wedding, or that no one was pregnant, I do not know, but I was sincerely happy for her. I was happy for everyone.
“Alexander,” My sister twisted in her shoes again like a little child, “I’m gobsmacked! I had this whole thing I wrote memorized, but it wouldn’t be nearly as special as what you just said to me. So here I go without it. I’ve loved you since I was eleven years old. I loved you all those years ago when I was just a little girl and you loving me back would have landed you in prison,” They both laughed, “I loved you when you were in love with someone else. I loved you when I hadn’t talked to you in ages. I loved you when I decided you were a bumpot and I didn’t want you. But there I went and loved you again when I got off that train and I thought you were Oliver standing with Silvia. But I love you right now more than I did any of those times and I have this feeling that I’ll love you even more tomorrow. And you’re right. Spending the rest of my life with Alex Dickinson is unexpected and it is odd and mad and, Alex, I love you straight back. You and our two little muffins. With all my heart, I do. You’re my whole life and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but with you, either. Not ever.”
Our father sat in his pew with an odd look on his face and stared at Lucy. I had never realised it as a child, but considering him as an adult sees her father, I knew he must have loved Mum very much. He was glad for Lucy, but watching that dress move about in living colour brought back memories I don’t think he was prepared to deal with even after all the years mum had been gone. For a second, I wished I’d known her so that I could comfort him, but the truth was that he had held our mother hostage in his own heart and never allowed us to love her, too. She was a vague recollection to me and someone Lucy had been too young to even miss, but that day I realised that she was still my father’s mistress, a ghost he was either too weak or too unwilling to set free. It was no wonder he could not handle being too close to his daughters. We haunted him with memories of our mother.
I could not wait for him to leave and go back to Scotland where he could be far enough away that I might forget that realization and not see him as pathetic ever again.
Oliver stood beside his brother and me beside my sister as they exchanged their rings. He never lifted his eyes from mine, nor did he fail somehow to get me smiling. I knew he was remembering our own wedding, the one that had lasted all of about three and a half minutes. The constable had rattled off the ceremony as if he was going to be late to lunch and sent us packing straight away.
My goodness, I thought, I’d been in a yellow sundress and he was wearing tan trousers and a white shirt and black tie from Bennington! It was the best we’d had to wear in our rush to the altar. I was so glad we hadn’t waited to marry. Marrying him was the best thing I ever did, even if Lucy and Alex looked much smarter than we did doing it.