Too Good to Be True(5)

“Grace, how are you? Are you just putting up a good front, honey, or are you really okay?” This from Mom who now approached our table. Dad, pushing his ancient mother in her wheelchair, trailed behind.

“She’s fine, Nancy!” he barked. “Look at her! Doesn’t she seem fine to you? Leave her alone! Don’t talk about it.

”

“Shut it, Jim. I know my children, and this one’s hurting. A good parent can tell.” She gave him a meaningful and frosty look.

“Good parent? I’m a great parent,” Dad snipped right back.

“I’m fine, Mom. Dad is right. I’m peachy. Hey, doesn’t Kitty look great?”

“Almost as pretty as at her first wedding,” Margaret said.

“Have you seen Andrew?” Mom asked. “Is it hard, honey?”

“I’m fine,” I repeated. “Really. I’m great.”

Mémé, my ninety-three-year-old grandmother, rattled the ice in her highball glass. “If Grace can’t keep a man, all’s fair in love and war.”

“It’s alive!” Margaret said.

Mémé ignored her, gazing at me with disparaging, rheumy eyes. “I never had trouble finding a man. Men loved me. I was quite a beauty in my day, you know.”

“And you still are,” I said. “Look at you! How do you do it, Mémé? You don’t look a day over a hundred and ten.”

“Please, Grace,” my father muttered wearily. “It’s gas on a fire.”

“Laugh if you want, Grace. At least my fiancé never threw me over.” Mémé knocked back the rest of her Manhattan and held out her glass to Dad, who took it obediently.

“You don’t need a man,” Mom said firmly. “No woman does.” She leveled a significant look at my father.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Dad snapped.

“It means what it means,” Mom said, her voice loaded.

Dad rolled his eyes. “Stuart, let’s get another round, son. Grace, I stopped by your house today and you really need new windows. Margaret, nice job on the Bleeker case, honey.” It was Dad’s way to jam in as much into a conversation as possible, sort of get things over with so he could ignore my mother (and his). “And, Grace, don’t forget about Bull Run next weekend. We’re Confederates.”

Dad and I belonged to Brother Against Brother, the largest group of Civil War reenactors in three states. You’ve seen us…we’re the weirdos who dress up for parades and stage battles in fields and at parks, shooting each other with blanks and falling in delicious agony to the ground. Despite the fact that Connecticut didn’t see a whole lot of Civil War action (alas), we fanatics in Brother Against Brother ignored that inconvenient fact. Our schedule started in the early spring, when we’d stage a few local battles, then move on to the actual sites throughout the South, joining up with other reenactment groups to indulge in our passion. You’d be amazed at how many of us there were.

“Your father and those idiot battles,” Mom muttered, adjusting Mémé’s collar. Mémé had apparently fallen deeply asleep or died…but no, her bony chest was rising and falling. “Well, I’m not going, of course. I need to focus on my art. You’re coming to the show this week, aren’t you?”

Margaret and I exchanged wary looks and made noncommittal sounds. Mom’s art was a subject best left untouched.

“Grace!” Mémé barked, suddenly springing back to life. “Get out there! Kitty’s going to throw the bouquet! Go! Go!” She turned her wheelchair and began ramming it into my shins, as ruthless as Ramses bearing down on the fleeing Hebrew slaves.

“Mémé! Please! You’re hurting me!” I yanked my legs out of the way, which didn’t stop her.

“Go! You need all the help you can get!”

Mom rolled her eyes. “Leave her alone, Eleanor. Can’t you see she’s suffering enough? Grace, honey, you don’t have to go if it makes you sad. Everyone will understand.”

“I’m fine,” I said loudly, running a hand over my uncontrollable hair, which had burst the bonds of bobby pins. “I’ll go.” Because damn it, if I didn’t, it would be worse. Poor Grace, look at her, she’s just sitting there like a dead possum in the road, can’t even get out of her chair. Besides, Mémé’s chair was starting to leave marks on my dress.

Out onto the dance floor I went, as excited as Anne Boleyn on her way to the gallows. I tried to blend in with the other sheep, standing in the back where I wouldn’t really have a chance of catching the bouquet. “Cat Scratch Fever” came booming over the stereo—so classy—and I couldn’t suppress a snicker.

Then I saw Andrew. Looking right at me, guilty as sin. His date was nowhere in sight. My heart lurched.

I knew he was here, of course. Him coming was my idea. But seeing him, knowing he was with another woman today in their first appearance as a couple, made my hands sweat, my stomach turn to ice. Andrew Carson was, after all, the man I thought I’d marry. The man I came within three weeks of marrying. The man who left me because he fell in love with someone else.

A couple of years ago, at Cousin Kitty’s second wedding, Andrew had come as my date. We’d been together for a while, and when it was bouquet toss time then, I’d gone up more or less happily, pretending to be embarrassed but with the smug contentment of a steady boyfriend. I didn’t catch the bouquet, and when I left the dance floor, Andrew had slung his arm around my shoulder. “I thought you could’ve worked a little harder out there,” he’d said, and I remembered the thrilling rush those words had caused.