Unfinished Business (37 page)

Hah!

“Only thirty or forty people.”

I blinked. “That’s not intimate.” The
ceremony we’d planned at the courthouse, with Wendell, Grimaldi,
Dix and Catherine, had been intimate. Thirty or forty people was
not intimate.

“We entertained almost three hundred for
Dixon and Sheila’s wedding,” Mother informed me, and tacked on a,
“rest her soul.”

“Who did you invite?” Did Rafe and I even
have forty friends between us? “David and the Flannerys? Wendell?
Detective Grimaldi?”

“Of course,” Mother said. “And the family
will be there.”

“So this is actually happening.”

“Yes, Savannah,” Mother said. “You will
marry Rafael tomorrow morning. Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
She sounded sort of hopeful. “If so, you should tell me now, while
I can still cancel the flowers and the caterer.”

“I haven’t changed my mind,” I said. “I’m
having his baby. My baby deserves a father. I love him. I haven’t
changed my mind.”
Sheesh
.

“Then I will expect you this evening,”
Mother said and hung up in my ear.

“She’s serious about this,” I told Rafe two
minutes later. I’d had to call him, of course. “She has actually
put together a whole wedding.” And in just five days. “With flowers
and catered food and a tent and a wedding dress and guests. This is
real!”

There was silence on the other end of the
line.

“Hello?” I said. “Rafe?”

“I’m here. You thinking maybe you don’t
wanna do this?”

“What? No! Of course not. I just didn’t
think she’d actually go through with it.”

Although that wasn’t entirely true, either.
When my mother said she was going to do something, she generally
did it. After my father died, she’d said she was going to turn the
mansion into an event venue. Weddings and music videos and photo
shoots for magazines. And she had.

No, I hadn’t really thought she’d say it and
not do it. I just hadn’t thought it would really happen.

“She’s invited guests,” I said. “Wendell.
Grimaldi. David and his parents. I don’t know if they’re coming,
but she invited them. She said there’ll be thirty or forty
people.”

“I didn’t think we knew thirty or forty
people,” Rafe said. “Not people who are gonna wanna watch you marry
me.”

I hadn’t thought so either, but it didn’t
seem like a good idea to tell him that. “I guess we’ll find out
tomorrow who’s there. You’ll be spending the night with Dix.”

There was silence.

“It’s bad luck for the groom to see the
bride before the wedding,” I added.

“It’s a good thing I like your brother,”
Rafe told me. “And that he tolerates me.”

“I think he does more than tolerate you. And
it could be worse. She could have stuck you with Bob
Satterfield.”

Rafe snorted. “Between him and his son, they
could kill me and nobody’d ever find the body.”

“You’re safer with Dix.”

“Damn straight,” Rafe said, and hung up,
too.

He came home just before six. I had packed an overnight bag for
myself, and Rafe always keeps a go-bag ready: left over from those
years when he never knew where he might be headed on a moment’s
notice. Then we locked up the house, got in the Volvo, and headed
to Sweetwater. I dropped Rafe at Dix’s house—Mother must have
warned my brother to expect us, because he opened the door with a,
“The beer’s cold and the pizza’s on order,”—and then I drove to the
mansion.

To be honest, I don’t remember much about
the evening. Too preoccupied with what was going to happen tomorrow
to pay much attention to what was happening tonight. Mother took me
outside and showed me the rows of chairs set up on the lawn, and
the tent. She also made me try on the gown that was hanging in a
garment bag in my room, just in case it needed a nip or a tuck by
tomorrow morning.

I admit I’d been worried. The hoop-skirt
gown I’d worn for my wedding to Bradley had been Mother’s idea. I
was concerned about the kind of monstrosity she might try to foist
off on me now. But cooler heads—Catherine’s, or maybe Audrey’s—had
prevailed. The dress was gorgeous. Off-white silk, with a
delicately sequined bodice, empire waist, and a flowing chiffon
skirt to my ankles. No train. No veil, either. “You had that the
first time,” Mother said. “You don’t need it again.”

No, I didn’t. The dress came with a sequined
headband, and once my hair was curled and shaped and twisted and
sprayed in place, I’d look great. With the cut of the dress, I
didn’t even look all that pregnant.

My wedding day dawned warm and sunny. I woke
up alone, and for a second, I felt a stab of fear when I realized
that Rafe wasn’t next to me in bed. But then I opened my eyes and
realized where I was, and I felt better. Dix had him. Dix wouldn’t
let anything happen to him.

“Dixon called,” were the first words out of
Mother’s mouth when I padded into the kitchen in my bathrobe.
“Everything is fine.”

The last weight fell off my mind. Nothing
had happened to him, and he hadn’t decided to run away during the
night. This was really happening.

Catherine showed up in a lovely blue dress,
and a few minutes later, Audrey walked in, leggy in purple. She’s
my mother’s best friend, and they look as different as night and
day. Where Mother is soft, genteel, and ladylike, Audrey is tall
and angular. She has thick, black hair in a dramatic wedge that
somehow manages to emphasize both cheekbones and jaw, and she
stands almost a head taller than Mother in her shiny patent-leather
peek-a-boo pumps with platform soles. She runs Audrey’s on the
Square, the only designer boutique in the county, and I had no
doubt whatsoever that my dress had come from her shop.

Between them, they spent the next two hours
tweezing and painting and curling and spritzing me with various
substances. The last thing that happened, was that the dress
dropped over my head, covering the elegant satin-and-lace bra and
panties that Audrey had also supplied. The idea that my mother and
her best friend had picked out the underwear my husband would be
peeling off me on our wedding night was a little disconcerting, but
it was beautiful underwear, so I tried not to think about it.

They adjusted the dress, and adjusted the
headband and hair, and blotted my lipstick one last time. When I
was ready to scream, Mother finally stepped back. “All right,
darling. What do you think?”

She turned me toward the mirror.

I looked at myself.

Catherine chuckled. “He’s going to die when
he sees you.”

“I sincerely hope not,” Mother said, “since
this will all have been wasted effort.”

Oh, sure. Because that was the biggest
concern by far. That the preparations—the food, the flowers, the
tent, and the dress—would be wasted because the groom was dead.

I tuned them out and focused on the mirror.
The dress was gorgeous. My hair looked good. The makeup made me
look dewy-fresh and glowing. Or maybe that was just the
pregnancy.

Or the occasion.

“I look good,” I said, unable to keep a hint
of surprise out of my voice.

Everyone nodded.

“And I don’t look like I’m wearing a tent.”
The chiffon draped over the baby bump without adding extra volume,
and the detail on the bodice drew the eye up and away.

Audrey sniffed. “Certainly not.”

“You’re pregnant,” Catherine added, “not
fat.”

I looked at myself in the mirror again. “I’m
getting married.”

All three of them smiled. Mother’s may have
been a bit strained, but only a bit. “If you’re ready,” she told
me, “it’s time to go.”

Was it? I checked the clock on the bureau.
Yes, it was.

Tamara Grimaldi was waiting in the foyer, in
a dark blue dress similar to mine. Satin bodice with blue sequins,
blue chiffon overskirt. Hers only came to the knees, though.

I blinked. Grimaldi was my bridesmaid? Not
Mother or Catherine?

She handed me a spray of flowers: simple and
stunning. White gardenias and baby’s breath surrounded by glossy,
dark green magnolia leaves, and finished off with trailing ivory
ribbons. I lifted them to my nose, and was practically knocked back
a step by the scent.

“You look stunning, Savannah,” Audrey told
me, with a kiss on the cheek.

Mother kissed the other one. “Good luck,
darling.”

I guess she still, in spite of practically
begging Rafe to marry me, thought I might need it.

“Go knock him dead,” Catherine added with a
grin. She didn’t bother kissing me, just herded Mother and Audrey
ahead of her through the double doors and down the steps.

Grimaldi lifted a smaller gardenia bouquet
from the foyer table. “Ready?”

I hesitated. “He’s here, right?”

“Who? Your boyfriend?”

I nodded.

“Of course he’s here,” Grimaldi said. “Your
brother babysat him all last night to make sure nothing
happened.”

“How does he look?” Nervous? Ready to bolt?
Ready to throw up?

“Good,” Grimaldi said, with a grin. “Wait
until you see him.”

“Did Mother make him wear a tuxedo?”

The grin widened. “Oh, yeah.”

Oh... wow. I’d seen Rafe in a tailored suit
before, and he’d looked great. Of course, if you ask me, I think he
looks great in anything. And best wearing nothing at all. But
there’s just something about a good-looking man in a tuxedo.

Especially if that man’s waiting for you at
the altar.

“Ready?” Grimaldi asked again. “It’s almost
eleven. They’ll start the wedding march any moment.”

“There are musicians?”

“Of course,” Grimaldi said. “Do you really
think your mother would arrange a wedding with canned music?”

When she put it like that... “I guess
not.”

“We should go. Or he might start to worry
that you’ve changed your mind.”

And we certainly wouldn’t want him thinking
that. “I’m ready,” I said.

Grimaldi nodded and opened the door. I
passed through, and she closed it behind me.

While I’d been upstairs getting painted and
spritzed, someone had decorated the front of the mansion with more
gardenias and magnolia leaves, and thick, white ribbons. A white
runner started at the bottom of the steps and led off across the
grass. Grimaldi and I stepped on it, and made our way toward the
chairs and the tent.

Just outside the flaps, Grimaldi stopped.
“I’ll walk down the aisle first,” she told me. “When I get to the
front, they’ll start the wedding march. Then you’ll walk down.”

“Alone?”

“Your brother can walk you if you want. But
we thought you might want to walk on your own.”

I blinked. That was different. My father had
still been alive when I married Bradley, so he had walked me down
the aisle and given me away. But I guess I didn’t mind doing it on
my own. I had given myself to Rafe long ago: body, soul, and heart.
This was just a formality. “Sure.”

Grimaldi nodded. “You’ve done this before,
so you know what to expect. Try not to trip and fall on the way
there.”

She ducked through the flaps before I could
respond to that tidbit of advice.

The music changed, and I guess what was the
bridesmaid’s processional began. I put one eye to the space between
the flaps and squinted until she’d reached what I thought was the
front of the tent. The music stopped, and a sort of breathless,
anticipatory hush spread as everyone turned on their chairs to peer
at the opening.

My heart was thudding so hard in my chest I
had difficulty drawing a breath, and my hand was shaking when I
pushed the tent flap open and stepped through.

I heard oohs and aahs from the audience.

The music started, but I couldn’t move. I
was too busy looking around. At the rows of chairs, decorated with
gardenias and magnolia leaves. At the petals strewn across the
aisle—the white silk runner—all the way to the front of the tent.
At the people.

There was my family, in the front. Mother
and Dix, Catherine and Jonathan, and all five children, decked out
in their Sunday best. Little Hannah had a huge, lopsided bow
drooping over one ear.

Charlotte, my best friend from high school,
was behind them. Somehow, Mother had gotten her here from North
Carolina in time for this, and her parents, too, even if they’d
only come from across town.

Darcy, the receptionist at Dix and
Jonathan’s law firm, was sitting with Audrey and the sheriff, next
to my Aunt Regina, my father’s sister and also the society reporter
for the local newspaper.

Good Lord, would Rafe and I find ourselves
in the society column of the Sweetwater Recorder next week?

Had Mother actually instructed my Aunt
Regina to announce my nuptials to Sweetwater’s prodigal bad-boy in
the town paper?

And on the other side of the aisle...

Wendell sat beside Mrs. Jenkins, Rafe’s
grandmother, whom he must have liberated from the nursing home and
brought with him. She was grinning toothlessly, her gray hair
neatly tamed and her ubiquitous housecoat exchanged for a summer
dress in pale blue. It was anyone’s guess whether she understood
what was going on, and had any clue who was marrying whom, but she
was here, and looked happy to be.

Jamal, Clayton, and José were here, too,
José with a young woman who looked a bit like the missing persons
photo of Maria Figueroa. No wonder he’d needed an extra minute with
Maria’s remains.

Behind them, Ginny and Sam Flannery sat side
by side, with Alexandra and Austin Puckett next to them. I had met
Brenda’s son and daughter last year, at her funeral, and Alexandra
and I had struck up a sort of friendship. She was only
sixteen—well, seventeen now—so we didn’t spend much time together,
but she liked me. She liked Rafe, too. And Austin and David went to
school together, so David must have told them about the wedding and
convinced Mother that she should invite them. Maybe Austin had been
at Peaceful Pines with David these past two weeks.