Once and for All(7)
The only wrinkle had come from the bride’s daughter, Beatrice. When she’d gotten engaged a couple of weeks ago, she decided she, too, had to have a Natalie Barrett Wedding. Complicating things was the fact that she and her fiancé were getting married in mid-August before moving across the country at the end of the summer for a medical residency, so everything had to happen ASAP. Normally, with the waitlist and my mother’s obsession with organization, we didn’t take on anything that came close to last minute. But Eve Little had been so easy, and they were spending so much money, that William, at least, had capitulated. Which was, well, forty percent of the battle.
I walked to the back of the rows of chairs I’d helped set out a couple of hours earlier, taking my place on the aisle. As usual, there were a few people clumped in the back row, which was sure to annoy William, who liked his audiences uniform. “What are they even thinking? It’s not like they’re going to get called on to participate,” he’d huff. In extreme cases I’d even witnessed him pulling his rank and reseating people, although that only happened when he was feeling especially pissy.
I didn’t have such strong feelings, so I just nodded at the couple a few seats away from me as I pulled out my phone, checking the time. There were fifteen minutes to go when the first group text from my mom arrived.
SWIMMERS HEADED TO POOL.
A beat, and William appeared, magically, from behind a light-draped topiary. Smoothly, he intercepted a woman and her kid, both in bathing suits, then redirected them back past the AREA CLOSED FOR EVENT sign.
There was then a burst of organ music, so sudden I was not the only one who jumped in my seat upon hearing it. Before my mom could type the inevitable WTF??? I slid out of my chair, hustling to the back of the pool patio, where the DJ, Monty, was already holding up his hands apologetically. Under control.
Twelve minutes. I turned, looking back to the entrance to the patio, where my mom was now bent over a tow-headed ring bearer. With everything that could go wrong in a ceremony, she particularly disliked the chaos factor associated with kids and dogs, and took what she considered to be appropriate offensive action with both. For canines, this was an ample supply of cut-up hot dogs, stuffed up her sleeve in a Ziploc bag. For children, candy bribes and a stern voice usually did the trick, although balance was important when it came to the latter. There were enough emotions at stake without a crying kid kicking off the whole thing.
By seven minutes, I was back in my seat, watching William survey the crowd as the final guests found seats. Whenever he saw the lack of bodies between the fourth row and last one, he winced, although I was pretty sure only I noticed.
At six on the dot, the music was supposed to begin. Instead, my phone vibrated again. I read the text twice and still didn’t understand it.
SOB AWOL 4 AISLE WALK.
Up front, William was also getting this message. He looked at me, raising his eyebrows.
WHAT? I typed, as the man two seats down from me checked his watch.
GET HERE NOW, was the reply, and I didn’t even finish it before I was on my feet and moving.
Don’t run, don’t run, I reminded myself, trying to hustle in an efficient but not panicked-looking way across the patio. When I got to the club lobby, the wedding party was lined up, the now teary-looking ring bearer in the front. Past him, and the pairs of bridesmaids and groomsmen, was a confab of Eve Little—looking radiant in a light yellow gown with petal sleeves; I loved third weddings!—her daughter Bee, and my mother. Everyone was talking at once.
“. . . have to be confident of the precise order to do our job properly,” my mom was saying as I came up. “Last-minute additions make that difficult if not impossible.”
“I understand that,” Eve said, as Bee, her own phone to her ear, scanned the room. “But he was just here!”
“He’s stealthy that way,” Bee told me, as if I knew what this was all about. “Maybe check outside?”
I looked at my mom, who said, “You heard her. Go check outside!”
“For who?” I asked. “Everyone’s here.”
I knew this, because the Cheat Sheet was one of my assigned jobs. The night before every event, I put together a single piece of paper containing a list of the wedding party and pertinent family, contact info for the vendors we’d hired (caterer, DJ, florist) as well the final, approved wedding schedule from arrival of guests to our departure. Now, only moments in, that was out the window.
“Ambrose,” Eve said. Hearing this, my mother tried (or actually, didn’t) to mask her frustration.
“Who?”
“My brother,” Bee told me, shifting her bouquet of white roses and lilies to her other hand. She was a gorgeous girl, blonde with creamy skin and blue eyes, the kind of good-looking that would be annoying if she wasn’t so nice. “He wasn’t going to be here, but now he is. Tall, blond like me, most likely talking to a girl. Smack him if you have to.”
SOB was Son of Bride, then. And the more colloquial meaning, if he really was singlehandedly holding all this up. “On it,” I said to my mom, starting to the lobby exit. Before pushing the door open, I took one last look behind me, just in time to see William moving quickly down the aisle, his phone clamped to his ear. If he and my mom had moved to actual talking on the phone, this was even worse than I thought.
Outside, I took a quick scan of the parking lot. Two golfers were standing by an Audi with clubs poking out of the trunk, talking, while a guy in chef whites stacked vegetable crates by the kitchen entrance. Otherwise, nothing to see. Or so I thought until I heard the melodic tinkle of what could only be, in any world, a pretty girl’s laugh.