The Wedding Veil(15)
Meredith finally sat down beside me on the long sofa, upholstered in a seashell print that she hated. She wouldn’t have to hate it much longer. “Mother, you drove the getaway car? What message does that send?”
I set my teacup down on the end table and crossed my arms. I tried to look indignant even though I knew some of the culpability for this was mine. Just not in exactly the way Meredith believed. “It sends the message that I love my granddaughter more than I love my reputation. It sends the message that I prioritize her happiness over everything else. What message does it send that you told her she would never find anyone as good as Hayes?”
She rolled her eyes. “You know how she is, Mother. That girl is flakier than a biscuit. Hayes is strong and steady. She can’t take care of herself. She needs him.”
It wasn’t wholly untrue that my granddaughter relied on her fiancé quite a bit. Especially once she, with no explanation, had left architecture school. That little girl who had been carrying around graph paper notebooks and sketching since she was six years old had suddenly quit. Just like that. When she was only months away from finishing her fifth-year professional degree, from sitting for her licensure exam, from achieving her dreams.
“Meredith, you have to know what happened. You have to,” I said. I picked my teacup back up, the china still smooth and delicate after all these years, and took a sip, inhaling the scent of spicy cinnamon as I did.
She rolled her eyes again. Ah, now we were back to mother and child. “If I knew, don’t you think I would have fixed it? Do you know what it took for Allen and me to scrimp and save and get her through college? And I cringe to think that she’s paying student loans for two semesters of graduate school that she didn’t even finish. And now that she isn’t going to be living with Hayes, that he isn’t going to be there to support her—what in the world will she do?”
I guessed that was the silver lining. “Well, she’ll have to learn how to take care of herself. It’s a lesson we all must learn, and believe you me, the older you get, the harder it is.”
I’d like to say that I could have taken care of myself long before now, long before I was this woman of eighty who felt afraid living alone in her own home. I wrapped my hands around the cup, the warmth feeling good on my tired fingers.
“But she always goes back to him, Mom. Always. And, yes, it’s no secret that I have been happy about that in the past. I love Hayes. So sue me. But at this point, she’s dug a hole so deep that it isn’t only that she loves him. She needs him, in the most practical way.”
I was from a different time. I was a woman who had raised her children and relied on her husband for the rest, so I wouldn’t necessarily disparage Julia’s choice if I had believed it was what she wanted—which I did not. But the problem was much larger. “He cheated on her, Meredith. They aren’t even married.”
She pointed at me decisively. “Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. They weren’t even married. If they were married, he wouldn’t have done that.”
Meredith and I had always had different logic on this particular matter, so we would agree to disagree.
She sighed. “And it’s more than that. She will take him back. She always does. And he will go after her. Because he always does. This is their pattern, falling apart and being flung back together. They love the drama of it all, the romance. They can’t live together, but they can’t be apart. In a week I’ll be getting a phone call that they’re getting married after all, and I’ll have to call everyone back and put this whole thing together again.”
It wasn’t particularly untrue what Meredith was saying. I had received more sobbing and gleeful phone calls from my granddaughter about this particular boy than I would like to say. I suppose I always assumed she would eventually get out from under his spell, that she would see that she deserved something steady, someone who would bring her peace. But I had to consider that maybe peace wasn’t what she wanted. Maybe peace wasn’t ever a part of the plan. The idea of those two getting together again was beginning to give me a headache. “It will all work out, one way or another” was all I could say. But even I didn’t know if that was true.
Then I had a thought that made me chuckle.
Meredith glared at me. “What could possibly be funny about this?”
I composed myself enough to say, “Just the thought of poor Alice trying to put this wedding back together again.”
“What if Alice decides Hayes and Julia need to release those ridiculous doves at the ceremony and one gets loose in the church again?” Now Meredith began to chuckle.
“Can you imagine if they had gotten married?” Tears were coming out of the corners of my eyes now. “Bird droppings were everywhere!”
When we had laughed away all our sorrow, I looked around the room, noticed how unthreatening it seemed in the light of day. It was only at night that the fear started. I’d tried to convince myself that it was ridiculous. This had been my home with the man I loved for decades. I had raised my children here, hosted Easter egg hunts for my grandchildren, laughed as they slid down the banister. I had held Julia’s engagement tea here, for heaven’s sake.
But it wasn’t my home anymore. Not with Reid gone. Alone in the dark of night, I felt terrified, panicked. Every creak of the floor, groan of the wind, chime of the grandfather clock, sent my heart racing into my throat. And I decided that now was as good a time as any.