The Wedding Veil(14)

“Stop,” I whispered, then repeated louder, “Stop!”

Babs looked alarmed.

“Babs, I’m not sure,” I said.

She nodded very seriously. “Then let’s get the hell out of here,” she whispered.

I put my hand to my mouth. I’d never heard Babs cuss. “But Mom will kill me.”

“Better an unhappy day than an unhappy life.”

I stopped, feeling stuck to the floor, the train of my gown suddenly so heavy it was in danger of pulling me down.

“Come on,” Babs hissed. “She’ll recover. You might not.” She shook her head. “I have an idea.”

“Sarah!” Babs exclaimed just as Mom and Sarah walked back into the room.

“The trolley is running a few minutes late,” Sarah said. Under her breath, she added, “Because Laney got drunk and lost her shoes.”

Babs smiled tightly. “I’d like a picture of you and Julia in the courtyard, please.”

Everyone followed Babs outside, including Mom. “Meredith, sugar, your hair needs a little touch-up in the back,” Babs said.

Mom rolled her eyes. “Goodness gracious. I knew it!”

Sarah and I locked eyes, and without a word, I knew she understood what was about to happen. Mom turned back into the church, and Babs turned to me. “Run!”

With no further instruction, the three of us took off through the parking lot, running toward Babs’s Cadillac. Sarah helped me stuff my giant dress in the back seat of the getaway car while Babs leaped in front. And though I’d been conflicted, the moment we pulled out I felt like I’d dodged a bullet.

It was only then that something hit me. I said: “Who in the world could have sent that video?”

Maybe they did it out of malice. Maybe they did it out of kindness. Either way, whoever sent that video might have just saved me from making the biggest mistake of my life.





BABS Cattle Prod

Present Day





I can’t explain exactly when or how it happens, only that it does. At some point over the years, our children suddenly decide that they have free rein to parent us. It starts slowly. A comment here, a suggestion there. And then they take over, fully and completely, as though you didn’t do a perfectly fine job raising them in the first place.

So here I was, in my own living room with its stunning view of the ocean, among my inherited furniture and knickknacks and whatnots, sipping tea that my daughter had made me not as a peace offering but as a trap. I would never walk away and leave a perfectly good cup of tea, which she well knew. She stopped pacing by the fireplace and glared at me. “What were you thinking?”

It had only been two days since my granddaughter had become a runaway bride, so maybe I should have been easier on my daughter. Even still, I didn’t want to play into the ruse that I was the child and she was the mother here, but I couldn’t quite help myself from saying, with the attitude and intention of a teenager, “I don’t know, Meredith, perhaps I didn’t want my granddaughter to be unhappy for the rest of her natural life?”

It couldn’t help but make me think of my late husband, Reid. And thinking of him, as I did no less than a thousand times a day, sent a shot right through my heart. It had been nearly fourteen months since he’d passed. And, yes, I could get out of bed now—not our bed, obviously, where I was certain I would never sleep again—but the guest bedroom bed, anyway. I could go to bridge club or book club, sit in the living room with the latest Reader’s Digest, even though Reid wasn’t sitting in his hideous recliner, reading a book a few feet from me. But I would not stop loving him until my dying breath. He was my one and only, my true love, so I meant it when I said, “Meredith, I think my granddaughter deserves eternal happiness. Forgive me for being so selfish.”

She sighed. “Mother, I know that you and Daddy had a fairy tale, okay? I get it. I understand. But not everyone is whisked away by the love of her life and spends sixty years swooning. Not everyone gets that.”

“Well, they should,” I said.

My daughter was pacing again now, her shoulder-length hair tied back with a ribbon, elegant and graceful in a pair of cigarette-legged black pants that made her seem slightly taller than her five feet five inches. She was a pretty little girl who had grown into a lovely woman. Both my girls had. They had the same long, slender neck and womanly figure. Meredith and Alice, my green-eyed beauties. They had brought Reid and me so much joy.

“Sweetheart, don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, knowing she was guaranteed to take what I said next the wrong way. “But it has broken my heart to see you so unhappy. It has nearly undone me.”

“I’m not unhappy,” she spat, stopping her pacing.

I put my hands up in defense. “Far be it from me to tell you what you are, but Meredith, you have been separated twice in the last decade. You certainly aren’t blissful.”

She sighed and looked at me wearily. “But we’re together now. I guess that’s what I’m saying. Yes, Allen and I have had our share of problems. But we love each other, and we have worked them out.”

I nodded. “I respect you for that more than words can say. But I will be very clear in that I do not wish that same fate for your daughter.”

Surely she didn’t, did she?