“Jewel should stay out of the Seawillows’ business,” Sugar Beth retorted. “She laughed in my face when I told her how much we wanted her to join.”
“You probably shouldn’t take it personally.”
“How can I not take it personally? Next to you, she’s my best friend, not to mention my future business partner. And she’s not half as funny as she thinks she is. She said joining the Seawillows was the first step toward putting on a hoop skirt and standing on the front lawn of Frenchman’s Bride waving a parasol and going fiddle-dee-dee.”
Winnie sighed. “This isn’t about Jewel. It’s about you.”
Sugar Beth sank down in an oak farm chair, the emotions of the past two days catching up with her. “Just because a person understands something about herself doesn’t necessarily mean she can fix it.”
“I’m guessing we’re talking about you now.”
“Think about it. A woman who’s always been overweight, for example. She knows exactly what she needs to do to keep off the pounds, but that doesn’t mean she can do it, right?”
“You’ve got a point.”
Sugar Beth pressed her stomach. “Call me crazy, but taking a fourth trip down the aisle doesn’t seem like the best way to fix whatever’s broken inside me.”
“Unless whatever was broken is already fixed.”
“Just thinking about all this is making me queasy. I’ve gotta go.” She grabbed her purse, gave Winnie a peck on the cheek, and made her way out of the store.
The heat had begun to settle in, and as she hit the sidewalk, she slipped on her new sunglasses, a trendy pair of aviators. A man she didn’t know tripped over his feet rubbernecking at her. She was too tired to appreciate the attention.
Gordon greeted her at the door. He’d gotten clingy since Colin left, and she sank down on the tile to give him love, but he was the product of a broken home, and he was too depressed to do more than roll over on his back. Afterward, she made her way to the kitchen, grabbed a carton of strawberry yogurt, and began to pace. Finally, she lay down on the sunroom couch, only to jolt awake a few hours later and begin pacing all over again.
Night settled in, and her agitation grew. By eleven o’clock, she’d worked herself into such a state she couldn’t stand it any longer, so she marched down the street and banged on Winnie’s door.
Her half sister answered in a pair of pajama tops, hair tousled, beard-burn reddening her cheek. Sugar Beth stormed inside. “Can’t the two of you spend just one evening talking like normal people?”
“Don’t take out your sexual frustration on me. What’s wrong?”
“I need to talk to Ryan.”
“He’s asleep.”
“Not for long.” Sugar Beth pushed past her and stalked upstairs. Winnie followed, bitching all the way.
Ryan lay on his stomach, probably naked, although a thin blue blanket covered him from the hips down, so she couldn’t be sure. She punched his shoulder. “Wake up!”
He rolled over, the sheet twisting around him, blinked, and looked past Sugar Beth to his wife, who crossed her arms over her chest and glowered. “She’s your old girlfriend. I barely know her.”
Sugar Beth had started to shake, but she kept her voice low so she didn’t wake Gigi. “Listen to me, Ryan Galantine. When that bastard calls back, you tell him he’s won this round. I’ll marry him. But I don’t take well to being blackmailed, and tell him I intend to spend the rest of my life making him miserable, got that?”
Ryan pushed himself up into the pillows. He looked sleepy but amused.
Sugar Beth bore in. “I mean it. If he wants this marriage so bad, he can have it, but he’d better be prepared to suffer serious consequences.” She spun around, marched past Winnie, stormed down the steps and out the door.
Ryan gazed at his wife. “They deserve each other.”
Sugar Beth refused to have anything to do with the arrangements other than to say she wanted a private ceremony, just Gigi, Ryan, and Winnie as her matron of honor. No one else, not even Jewel or the Seawillows.
Which wouldn’t do as far as Winnie was concerned. She called the Seawillows together, minus Sugar Beth, and even coerced Jewel into attending. Since Leeann didn’t have a baby-sitter, they met around her kitchen table, where Winnie took out a yellow pad and got down to business. “We’ll have to plan the whole thing ourselves. Luckily, Colin’s given us an unlimited budget. He told Ryan he wants the ceremony by next Saturday at the latest, which gives us ten days. He’s afraid she’ll bolt if we wait longer.”
“I’ll make sure the video store hides The Runaway Bride,” Merylinn said. “No sense in giving her ideas.”
“If Colin wants to keep her from running off, why doesn’t he get back here and see to it himself?” Heidi asked.
Winnie gazed down at her yellow pad so she didn’t have to meet their eyes. “He said he had to finish his book first.”
That didn’t set well with any of them. “You’d think she’d be a little more important than finishing a book.” Merylinn sniffed.
“I’ve never understood that man.”
“I hope Sugar Beth doesn’t figure out how far down she is on his priority list.”
“You know how sarcastic he can be,” Jewel said, doing her best to defend him. “Maybe Ryan misinterpreted.”
But a sense of uneasiness undercut the rest of their planning.
Ignoring Sugar Beth’s wishes, Winnie decided on a Saturday evening ceremony at the Presbyterian Church followed by a tent reception on the front lawn of Frenchman’s Bride. With no time to issue formal invitations, Jewel and the Seawillows called everybody they could think of, and by the time they were done, three hundred people had accepted. Sugar Beth went ballistic when she heard. Winnie told her to shut up and find a dress.
Ryan managed the license, and Leeann dragged Sugar Beth to the lab for her blood test. Sugar Beth had no idea how Colin was handling his end of the process, and she was too busy nursing her grievances to care.
On Friday morning, the day before the wedding, a crew arrived at Frenchman’s Bride to erect the tent for the reception, and not long after, a rental van appeared with tables and chairs. Sugar Beth strapped a headset over her ears to shut it all out and spent the day petting Gordon and making plans for her bookstore while an old Pearl Jam CD blared in her ears.
There’d been no time to put together a shower or a bachelorette party, which wasn’t a problem, since Sugar Beth wouldn’t have attended either. The night before the wedding Winnie tried to talk her into staying in the Galantine guest room, but she refused to leave Frenchman’s Bride. This forced Winnie to put her alternate plan in place, and at six o’clock on Friday evening Gigi showed up at the door with three large pizzas, Gwen Lu, Gillian Granger, Sachi Patel, and Jenny Berry.
“Mom said we could have a sleepover here. Everybody wants to hear your power speech. Plus Jenny really needs help with her eye makeup.”
Sugar Beth marched to the phone and called Winnie. “Is this what my life has come to? I’m being guarded by thirteen-year-olds?”
“You’re a little nervous,” Winnie replied. “I decided you needed a distraction.”
“A little nervous! I’ve pegged the Richter scale on nerves! This is all a setup. The final piece in his plan to get revenge. I’ll march down the aisle, and he won’t be there. He’s going to leave me stranded at the altar. I’m telling you right now, he’s not showing up tomorrow.”
“Standing you up at the altar would be overkill,” Winnie pointed out. “He already finished you off when he wrote Reflections.”
Sugar Beth hung up on her.
Winnie proved to be right about one thing. It was impossible to brood with a houseful of thirteen-year-olds demanding her attention. Gigi’s new friends were geeky and awkward, but sweet and funny, too. Someday the Seawillows might need to form a junior auxiliary.
She slept badly that night and rose long before the girls. She came downstairs in an old pair of shorts and one of Colin’s work shirts, with her hair hanging in a ratty tangle and a crease across her cheek. Her wedding day. Again.