Kiss the Bride (29 page)

The childhood fear that her mother would no longer love her if she expressed an opinion dogged her.

Don’t let her run over you. Say it.

“I’m not sure… August is so hot, and… while I love Evan to death, I’m not sure he’s the right one for me.”

“Young lady,” Honey said and sternly pointed a finger at her. “Enough with the cold feet. It’s time to grow up. You are
not
postponing this wedding again. The last two postponements have already cost your father in the
neighborhood of twenty thousand dollars. He doesn’t complain because he loves you, but I will not tolerate another postponement. You are marrying Evan Van Zandt on August fourth at three p.m., and I will not hear another word about it.”

“It’s time,” Skylar told her that night, “to play your trump card. Mother might have issued an edict about your marriage to Evan, but you can still rattle her cage enough so she’ll have to let you wear the veil.”

Delaney, who had been growing more and more upset as the wedding plans progressed, was susceptible to Skylar’s words. She climbed out of bed and as she made her way to the closet, she bumped against the dresser where she’d installed the hula doll Nick had given her.

The hula girl wildly shook her hips, and darn if she didn’t appear to be winking.

Shake it up.

She flung open the closet door, took out both the consignment shop veil and the one her mother had bought for her at Bergdorf’s. Using great care, she sat down at her vanity table, snapped the label from the Bergdorf’s veil, and painstakingly stitched it into the hem of the veil Morag had tatted three hundred years ago.

As she worked, Delaney felt the power of the veil suffuse her. On this one thing, she would have her way. She might not get the chapel she’d hoped for or the wedding cake or the invitations or the dress or the groom of her choice, but by God she would wear Morag’s veil. One way or the other she would have some small bit of magic in her life.

After she finished sewing the label in the veil, she crept downstairs to the closet where Honey kept the wrapping paper. She put the veil in a Bergdorf’s box and then went
back to her room to print off a note from her computer. Delaney racked her memory for the name of one of Honey’s Philadelphia relatives and could only recall one. A great-aunt Maxie whom she’d never heard from nor met. Delaney had no idea if the woman was even still alive or not, but at this point she did not care. The note she typed read:

To Delaney—so sorry I cannot attend the wedding. Please accept this veil in lieu of my presence. Wear it in good health—Your Great-Aunt Maxie.

Pleased with her handiwork, she wrapped the veil in elegant gift-wrapping paper, adorned it with a lavish bow, and sneaked back downstairs to put it with the stack of presents yet to be gone through sitting on the dining room table. She couldn’t wait to see the look on her mother’s face when Delaney opened that veil in the morning.

Honey could not believe Delaney was trying to back out of the wedding a third time. Children could be so ungrateful. No matter how much you did for them, it never seemed to be enough. They criticized and complained and generally behaved in a disagreeable manner.

She was going to take the high moral ground and forgive her daughter. Cold feet was an unpleasant affliction. Not that she could empathize. Marrying James Robert had been the best thing that had ever happened to her. She’d never had second thoughts. Even years later, when he’d developed a drinking problem. She knew you had to take the good with the bad.

Delaney was just nervous. That was all. Everything
would be fine as long as Honey did not allow her to consider postponing as an option. This wedding was happening. Honey would not be embarrassed again.

“Mother,” Delaney told her at breakfast, “I want to apologize for my behavior yesterday. You were right and I was wrong.”

Honey smiled. There now. That was the daughter she knew and loved. “It’s all right, darling. I really do understand that this is a stressful time for you.”

“Will you help me go through the gifts that arrived since yesterday? I want to keep abreast of the thank-you notes.”

“Absolutely.” Honey beamed. Yes, this was what she’d been wanting from Delaney. Full participation in the process. Honey retrieved the embossed stationery she’d had printed up just for the wedding and her Mont Blanc pen and joined her daughter in the dining room.

The packages that had arrived in the previous day’s afternoon deliveries were stacked beside the boxes they’d already opened and gone through. Honey pulled out her list and settled at the table to write down who had given what while Delaney unwrapped the packages. She brought her orange juice with her from the breakfast table. It rested on a coaster to her left.

“Oh,” Delaney said after she’d pulled the wrapping paper off the first gift. “It’s in a Bergdorf’s box.”

“Who’s it from?” Honey asked, picking up her glass of orange juice for a sip.

“I don’t know. Let me see if there’s a card in the box.” Delaney lifted the lid and took out a wedding veil.

No, not just a wedding veil, but that hideous consignment shop wedding veil Honey had found under Delaney’s bed. The one she’d hidden in her own closet.

She felt the blood drain from her face. What was going on here?

“Isn’t it beautiful? And it has a designer label,” Delaney said, shooting Honey a cool, calculated gaze.

“Who… sent it?”

“There’s a note right here. ‘To Delaney—so sorry I cannot attend the wedding. Please accept this veil in lieu of my presence. Wear it in good health—Your Great-Aunt Maxie.’ ”

Maxie. The name she’d never expected to hear again.

All the air left Honey’s lungs. The glass of orange juice slipped from her hand and crashed to the tile, splattering her white slacks like a Jackson Pollock painting.

“Goodness, Mother, are you okay?”

Honey met her daughter’s gaze, and she couldn’t believe the cunning expression she saw there. It was as if Delaney was channeling Skylar.

“Fine,” she managed to whisper. What was going on?

“Wasn’t that sweet of Great-aunt Maxie?” Delaney clutched the veil to her chest. “I simply have to wear this veil at the wedding. I’m sure you won’t mind if we return the veil you bought me. Right, Mother?”

“Right,” Honey croaked.

And that’s when she realized it was the beginning of the end of her life as she knew it.

On Thursday evening, at the Orchid Villa retirement community, Trudie and Lucia threw Delaney a bachelorette party.

Still flying high on her victory with the wedding veil, Delaney brought it with her to the party.

Everyone oohed and aahed over it as they passed it around. Then Tish told them about how wishing on the veil was supposed to make the deepest desires of your heart come true. Then, of course, everyone wanted to try
it on and make a wish. As if it were a birthday cake or a falling star or a wishing well.

Delaney cringed as it was passed from head to head. “Please, you guys, I promised the lady I bought it from that I wouldn’t wish on the veil.”

“You promised you wouldn’t wish on the veil,” Jillian pointed out, just after she wished to win an important court case she was in serious danger of losing. “We didn’t.”

Delaney wrung her hands. “It still feels wrong.”

“You don’t seriously believe in it?” Tish said and then wished to get out of debt, before passing the veil to Rachael.

“The issue isn’t whether I believe in it or not, but the fact that I promised Claire Kelley.”

“But like Jillian said, that was your promise, not ours.” Rachael settled the veil on her head.

“
Et tu,
Rachael?”

Rachael shrugged. “I wish for a grand romance.”

“It’s not Aladdin’s lamp, you guys.”

“We know. We’re just having fun.” Trudie accepted the veil from Rachael. “I wish to find a red-hot stud in my bed,” she said, then passed it to Gina, who wished to get pregnant.

That brought an “aah” from everyone assembled.

Everyone except Lucia.

Lucia met Delaney’s eyes. She was the only one who appreciated the power of the veil. When Gina passed the veil to her, Lucia said, “I wish you would all respect Delaney’s wishes.”

She got up and said to Delaney, “I’m just going to put this in Trudie’s bedroom so no one else is tempted to monkey with fate. Don’t forget it when you leave.”

Delaney smiled gratefully at Lucia.

“Okay,” Trudie said, rubbing her palms briskly together. “Who’s up for Jell-O shooters?”

“I’m in,” Tish said.

“Me too,” Jillian chimed in.

“None for me.” Gina patted her flat belly. “Chuck and I are working on giving the twins a little sister.”

“I’m the designated driver,” Rachael explained. “I’ll have to pass as well.”

“Delaney?” Trudie coaxed. “It’s your next to last night as a free woman. Gotta shake things up and cut loose.”

“No Jell-O shooters,” Lucia said, coming back from the bedroom. “Until everyone has some food in their stomachs. There’s Stromboli in the kitchen.”

They all crammed into the kitchen, and soon they were laughing and talking and eating and drinking and doing Jell-O shooters and telling worst-date horror stories.

“I went out with a guy who, instead of going in for a good-night kiss, licked my face.” Jillian shuddered.

“Ugh!” everyone shouted in unison.

“A guy took me to the movies, and when I came back from getting popcorn, he was necking with the woman sitting across the aisle from us,” Gina said.

“What a pig.” Rachael shook her head.

“Sex addict,” Jillian diagnosed.

“Anyone wanna talk brushes with celebrities?” Trudie asked.

Lucia sighed. “Trudie had sex with Frank Sinatra when she was eighteen, and she’s just dying to tell the story to a fresh audience.”

“No kidding?” the younger women exclaimed. “Tell us, tell us. What was old Blue Eyes like in bed?”

“First let’s set the stage. Anyone for poker?”

Five minutes later they had Sinatra on the stereo. Trudie was dealing Texas Hold ’Em, and Tish was passing around a bottle of peppermint schnapps because they’d run out of Jell-O shooters. Everyone seemed to be having a great time.

In Delaney’s estimation, it was a pretty cool bachelorette party and she was glad no one had hired a male stripper. That would have been so embarrassing.

But then halfway through the game, there was a knock at the door. “Get that for me, will you, Jillian?” Trudie asked.

Jillian pushed back from the kitchen table just as another knock sounded.

“Houston PD,” came a rough, masculine voice. “Open up in the name of the law.”

Delaney’s heart leaped.

And when Jillian opened the door to reveal a very buff masked man in a police uniform, for one crazy second Delaney thought it might be Nick.

The minute he walked over the threshold, her hopes were shattered. “We’ve had reports of disturbing the peace.”

“Please, Officer Goodbody,” Trudie said. “Don’t arrest us. We’re having a bachelorette party.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?”

In an instant someone killed Sinatra and put on stripper music and Officer Goodbody whipped off his Velcro pants. “Who’s the bride-to-be?”

Delaney good-naturedly endured the striptease and to please her friends pretended to like it. But the thing was, the fake cop made her think about the real cop in her life.

Nick’s not in your life.

Her heart hit the floor. Sadness filled her, and she had to force herself to keep smiling as Officer Goodbody waggled his groove thing. She missed Nick so much.

What would it be like?
she wondered. If it was Nick she was going to meet at River Oaks Methodist Church on Saturday afternoon instead of Evan?

Inside her head, wistful longing warred with loyal duty. Sexual chemistry duked it out with steadfast stability. Desire versus dignity.

She couldn’t take it anymore. “Excuse me,” Delaney said, got up from the table, and left the room, leaving Officer Goodbody looking surprised.

“Hey, what gives with her?” he asked. “Don’t she wanna see the finale?”

“You can show us,” Delaney heard Jillian say as she hurried into Trudie’s bedroom, looking for solitude so she could collect her thoughts.

The minute she walked into the room, she saw the veil stretched out on Trudie’s bed, looking more magical than ever.

Wish on me,
it whispered to her.
Make the deepest wish of your soul come true.

Delaney paced Trudie’s small bedroom, casting frequent glances at the veil.

You can’t wish on the veil. You promised Claire Kelley.

But it was a promise Delaney couldn’t keep. The veil was her only way out. The single salvation left to her. She knew no other way to get out of the marriage that should have been so perfect and yet loomed like a total disaster. She had to rely on the magic of the veil. She had to believe.