Mother of the Bride (19 page)

He'd paced his office, telling himself the Grand Plan was designed to serve the greater good, to save Aldo from making the biggest mistake of his young life. It was his duty. Artie had trusted him, counted on Gus to look out for Aldo. Made sense till he ventured back to the laptop and had another look at the Grand Plan. It didn't read like he was trying to serve Aldo's best interests—it read like he was trying to serve his own.

All right, he'd decided. He'd write another plan. A new Life Plan for Angus Munroe. He sat down and opened a new document, poised his fingers over the keys and hit a solid brick wall of writer's block. He'd stared at the screen, unable to type so much as a comma, the cursor blinking at him till the headache he woke up with in the hospital Tuesday morning came roaring back into his temples.

He'd shut down the laptop, took a shower and shaved, but it hadn't helped. It was almost 8
A.M.
now and he was tired
and hungry. His neck, his shoulders
and
his head ached. He'd napped a little in his reading chair by the window, but he hadn't been to bed. He couldn't face sleeping with such a selfish sonofabitch.

He wanted to blame his behavior on the concussion, but he'd been in full possession of his stinking, miserable faculties when he'd written the Grand Plan. Which was not to say that he knew what he was doing, because he didn't. Cydney nailed that right on the head.

Since Aldo's call on Monday he'd done nothing but react. First to the news that he was getting married, second to the leveler that he was marrying Fletcher Parrish's granddaughter. Gus had gone ballistic, and then he'd gone on the defensive, circling the wagons, closing ranks to protect the thing that meant the most to him in the world, his family.

The problem was that Aldo wanted a family of his own. He was entitled. So was Gus, but he'd lost his. He could've married and started another one, but he didn't want another family, he wanted the one he'd lost. He didn't think of himself as a man who lived in the past, but that's what he'd been doing. He'd convinced himself that so long as he had Aldo he still had Artie and Beth and his parents and Aunt Phoebe, or little pieces of them, anyway.

Aldo smiled just like Artie and laughed just like Beth. He had his mother's hair and eyes, his father's nose and chin. Sometimes he was scatterbrained like Beth, but he had a mind for math like Artie, and Aunt Phoebe's gentle heart. Gus didn't see much of his parents in Aldo, but he told him stories about his grandparents and he kept pictures of them and Artie and Beth and Aunt Phoebe on the piano in the R&R room.

So you won't forget them, he'd told Aldo. Gus called the photo array the Family Gallery. Aldo called it the Family Shrine. He'd asked Gus after Aunt Phoebe died why the photographs on the piano were the only things in the house Gus ever dusted.

Didn't have to be Freud to figure that one out. All these years he'd been trying to keep his family alive. Gus thought
he'd accepted their loss, but apparently he hadn't. He'd barely gotten over losing his parents in a car wreck when the plane crash took Artie and Beth. He'd cried buckets. He and Aunt Phoebe cried a river between them, but maybe it took more than tears.

Maybe it took dismantling the shrine, tucking the pictures away in albums on a closet shelf. He could do that when he moved the piano, but what would he put in their place? What would he put in Aldo's place? Just thinking about it made his palms sweat. He wiped them one at a time on the thighs of his jeans, wrapped his hands around Artie's Louisville Slugger and thought he should probably put it away, too. It was a baseball bat, not a holy relic. He should save it for Aldo's son.

Now that was a scary thought, perpetuating the gene pool that produced Bebe Parrish. The more Gus saw of her the more certain he was that Aldo was making a colossal mistake. But it was Aldo's to make and Aldo's to pay for. No matter how nuts it drove Gus to think about having to put up with Bebe until the divorce. Or God forbid, the rest of his life.

The proper way to handle this was to tell Aldo point-blank how he felt. It was dirty pool to hold Artie's will over his head and plot and scheme behind his back, which meant the Grand Plan had to go. So did his plan to woo Cydney. He couldn't say no cohabitation to Aldo and then sleep with the bride's aunt. Well, he could. It was his house and he and Cydney were adults, but it was the old do-what-I-say-not-what-I-do thing, which he'd always tried to avoid.

And besides the scorching kiss they'd shared in her kitchen, Gus had no real proof that Cydney wanted to be wooed. She thought he was the nicest man she'd ever met. A far cry from, “Oooh, you stud, take me to bed.” She'd think Jack the Ripper was the nicest man she'd ever met if he asked her to be his date for the wedding.

She wouldn't think he was Mr. Nice Guy if she saw the Grand Plan. Or if she knew he'd asked her to be his date just so he could keep her close to his bed. Well, not
just,
but mostly. Two more excellent reasons to hit the delete key. Gus turned toward the laptop and stopped. He still had Artie's
bat on his shoulder. He took it off, held it in his hands and rubbed his thumb across the fly-ball dents.

Put it away, Munroe,
his little voice said, and Gus did, in the closet next to the credenza, planting a kiss on the barrel before he stood the bat in the back corner, shut the door and drew a breath of stale, stuffy air.

The power and the air-conditioning had been off for almost ten hours. Gus opened the small windows flanking the big one overlooking the lake, inhaled cool, rain-freshened air and turned toward his desk. He sat down, opened the laptop and turned it on, brought up the Grand Plan to Wreck the Wedding and took one last look at it. Damn shame to delete it, really. It was some of his best work.

“Hey, Uncle Gus!” He nearly jumped out of his chair at Aldo's voice and the bang of his fist on the office door. “You up yet?”

“I'm awake. C'mon in.”

Aldo opened the door and stuck his head past it. “Gramma George is making French toast. How many slices?”

Good ol' Georgette. Still trying to bribe him with food into seeing the wedding the Parrish way. All the tempting meals in the world wouldn't change his opinion of Bebe and this marriage, but what was the harm in letting her try? It wasn't plotting and scheming. But it wasn't honest, either. He'd be better off with the Chee-tos and Gatorade he had stashed in the credenza for breakfast.

“Tell her thank you, Aldo, but I—”

“Hal-loo-ooo! Angus?” Georgette called up the stairs behind Aldo. “Powdered sugar or just butter and syrup? Blueberry or maple?”

Blueberry was Gus' favorite. He thought about Chee-tos and caved.

“I'll have the works, please, with blueberry syrup,” he called back to Georgette. “Be right down.”

“Cool,” Aldo said, and shut the door.

Bravo, Munroe,
his inner voice said.
That's living your convictions.

“Oh shut up.” Gus pushed out of his chair and made for the door.

He hadn't smelled French toast in Tall Pines since Aunt Phoebe died, but the aroma—butter-fried bread drenched in egg and milk with a splash of vanilla and a pinch of nutmeg— filled his nose halfway down the stairs and made his mouth water. He hadn't laid eyes on his aunt's orange press in five years, either, but he saw it when he pushed through the door behind the bar, sitting on the island between Aldo and Bebe, dripping orange pulp.

“Hey, Uncle Gus.” Aldo grinned cheerfully and handed him a glass of fresh-squeezed juice.

“Ready in a jiff, Angus.” Georgette, her cheeks pink from the steam cloud rolling off the gas range, waved a spatula at him. “Bebe, dear. Check the syrup and make sure it's warm enough.”

“Yes, Gramma.” She rolled her eyes and dragged herself toward the stove and a small saucepan simmering on a back burner.

“Bebe's not a morning person,” Aldo whispered to him.

“She doesn't seem to be much of an afternoon or evening person, either,” Gus whispered back, and drank his orange juice.

Aldo frowned at him.

“Just my opinion.” Gus gave him the glass and made for the bay window to help Herb open the pine table so he could put in the leaf.

“Morning, Herb,” he said, taking hold of one end of the table. “Let me give you a hand.”

“Thanks, Gus. Morning to you, too.” Herb pulled his end open and seated the leaf in the gap. “Okay. Give her a shove.”

They pushed the table together and tucked it back into the bay of the fogged-up window behind the bench. Gus opened the small side windows and the back door to let the heat out and turned around. He saw Aunt Phoebe's old stovetop coffeepot steaming on a trivet on the counter beside a pot of tea, but no sign of Cydney.

“Where's Cydney?” he asked Herb.

“Don't know. Haven't seen her yet this morning.”

“Oh, she left,” Bebe said offhandedly from the island.

Georgette switched off the flame under the cast-iron skillet and wheeled away from the stove. “What do you mean,
she left
?”

“I mean she left.” Bebe shrugged and licked orange juice off her fingers. “About eleven-thirty last night.”

“No, I didn't.” Cydney marched into the kitchen from the hallway in jeans, a white knit pullover—and fire in her eyes.

Bebe spun toward her. “You said you were leaving.”

“No. You said I was leaving. I decided to stay. Morning, Mother. Morning, Herb.” Cydney picked up a set of ribbed green place mats Gus had never seen before, plates from Aunt Phoebe's set of everyday white stoneware that were stacked on the end of the island and brought them to the table. “Good morning, Gus.”

“Morning, Cydney.” He smiled at her and she smiled back.

She looked like hell. Her eyes were puffy from crying and her silver curls were a mess of tight, frizzy links. Looked like she'd stuck her finger in a light socket. And still Gus wanted to hug her.

“If I were cups,” she said to him, “where would I be?”

“I'll get them.” Gus paused on his way to the dish cabinet, spread his hands on the island and leaned toward Bebe. “I asked Cydney to stay. I need a date for the wedding and she agreed to accompany me. She'll be sitting on Aldo's side of the room with me. Any objections?”

“N-n-no,” Bebe stammered, red-faced.

“Good.” Gus looked her straight in the eye. “Subject closed.”

Bebe stuck her lip out. It was childish as hell, but Gus stuck his lip out right back at her. Her eyes flew wide open.

“Breakfast is served,” Georgette announced, lifting a steaming platter heaped with French toast off the counter.

Gus carried mugs and the coffee to the table and went back for the teapot. Cydney was already seated on the bench with Herb, catty-corner from Bebe and Aldo. Gus took the chair
at the other end next to Cydney and set the teapot in front of her.

“Thank you,” she said, and picked up her napkin, green cloth to match the mats. She spread it in her lap and laid a folded sheet of paper on top. She kept glancing at it and touching it. Gus had no idea what it was or what Cydney intended to do with it, until she finished her French toast, laid the paper on the edge of the table and wiped her mouth. Then she shifted on the bench to look at her niece.

“I've thought about what you said to me last night, Bebe. If you and Aldo are old enough to make your own decisions and decide the course of your lives, I'm sure you'll want to be in charge of every aspect of your wedding,” she said, handing Bebe the folded piece of paper.

Everyone stopped eating, even Aldo. He blinked up from his plate with a drip of syrup in one corner of his mouth. Bebe plucked the folded sheet of paper gingerly from Cydney's fingers.

“What's this?” she asked.

“The list Gramma George made of the decorations you visualized for the great room.”

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Go shopping.”

“Me?”
Bebe squeaked.

“Take Aldo with you. It's his wedding, too.”

“But Aldo and I are going to Silver Dollar City today.”

Cydney poured a cup of tea, added cream and sugar and didn't answer. Georgette started to say something, then pressed her lips shut.

“Here, Gramma.” Bebe thrust the list at her.

“Herb and I are going to Eureka Springs,” she replied.

“But it's your list!”

“And it's your wedding,” Georgette said firmly.

Oh God. Gus gulped a slug of coffee and a deep breath. He'd volunteered to go shopping with Cydney, not spend the day alone with her in a house with sixteen beds and eight big, long, wide sofas. His imagination and his libido soared. So
did a certain area of his anatomy he called Clyde. Gus hunched forward on his elbows and cleared his throat.

“Uh, Herb,” he said. “Think you can find Eureka Springs okay? Cydney and I had other plans today, but we'd be glad to tag along.”

Cydney paused with her teacup halfway to her mouth and arched an eyebrow at him. “We would?”

“Nice of you, Gus.” Herb caught Georgette's hand and winked at him. “But we have other plans, too.”

“Just thought I'd offer.” Gus smiled gamely, then said to Georgette, “Wonderful French toast. Why don't you dump Herb and marry me?”

“Sorry, Gus. I saw her first.” Herb grinned. “Tell you what, though. I'm told Cydney's French toast is just as good as my Georgie-girl's. You could always marry her.”

Cydney choked on her tea, nearly dropped the cup getting it back in the saucer and snatched her napkin over her mouth and her nose. She made a noise in her throat that sounded like she was strangling—which pretty much deflated Clyde's spirits—scrambled off the bench and dashed for the bathroom.

“Oh my,” Herb said bewilderedly. “What did I say?”

So much for scorching kisses in the kitchen. Gus excused himself and took his bent ego for a walk.

The rain had sucked all the heat out of the air and turned his backyard into a bog. The beat-up old brown loafers he'd stepped into after his 3
A.M.
shower, with jeans and his gray Mizzou T-shirt, squished through sodden leaves. He slogged up the hill to the lake through rain-dulled autumn trees. He dug a couple fistfuls of muddy rocks out of the beach and sat on the edge of the dock skipping them into the lake. He'd been at it a while when Aldo dropped down on the dock beside him.