As Aunt Mari stared at her in stunned disbelief, Diane turned and almost ran into me. She looked down at me and the teacup for a second as if she’d forgotten who I was. Then she opened the door and whisked me into Mama’s room ahead of her and closed the door again right in Aunt Mari’s face. I spilled half the tea, but I didn’t care. I was just glad to get out of that hallway before Aunt Mari got her voice back and went looking for someone to take things out on.
When the rest of the aunts found out what Diane was planning, they were more upset than ever. Aunt Janna even said that Aunt Mari must have misunderstood. She was so sure that she nearly convinced some of the other aunts, until Diane came down and straightened them all out. Aunt Tilly was the only one who seemed to think that it was all right for Diane to go ahead with her wedding just as she’d planned it.
Papa arrived two days later. He looked tired, and he went straight in to Mama and stayed there until the next morning when he and Mama came down to breakfast. It was the first time Mama had been out to see the family since she’d made the announcement.
After that, things sped up considerably. Whether the aunts approved or not, there was still a passel of wedding work left to do, and they weren’t about to let Diane’s friends take over. So Aunt Tilly’s house was busier than ever for the next few days. If I poked my nose out of my room, some aunt would pounce and send me off on an errand, thirteenth child or not. I didn’t mind much, because it made me feel that I was finally part of the preparations, but Lan took to running off with the older boys right after breakfast.
Despite everything, Diane’s wedding was beautiful. She had it in our old church, that the Rothmer family had been going to since the day Grandfather first moved to Helvan Shores years and years before. It was a tall stone building with a square tower for the bells. Charlie told me the congregation had sent all the way to Albion for those bells, which he thought was a great waste when they could have got them easier from Philadelphia or New Amsterdam. Inside, the church was like an enormous cave, cool and gloomy even on a hot summer day with all the candles lit.
Diane looked lovely in her pale gray wedding dress, with the bridal wreath on her head. The wreath had taken Allie and Nan and three of my cousins most of the previous day to make. The pincushion flowers kept falling out between the rosemary and love-be-true, or ending up in the wrong order. Bridal wreaths are important to get right, because everything in them means something magical.
After the ceremony, we all went from the church to Uncle Gregory’s house, which was the only one that had a lawn big enough for everyone. I don’t know what we would’ve done if it had been raining—what with Papa’s brothers and sisters and their children and children’s children, we’d have filled up two or three houses, easy, and all Mama’s family was there, too. I’d forgotten I had so many relatives. And on top of all of them, there was John’s family, and the people from the traveling orchestra, and all sorts of friends from town. Even Uncle Gregory’s enormous back lawn barely had room.
At first, it seemed that everyone had forgotten about Rennie eloping and our family being disgraced. Everyone laughed and talked while the hired girls brought out the roast chicken and the jellied clams and the new bread and wine and all the other good things my aunts had been fixing for the past two days. John’s best man made a toast to the bride and groom—health and happiness, I think—and everyone clapped and drank. Then Papa made a toast, and John’s father made one, and after that I lost track.
Once the speechifying was over, I started to feel uncomfortable. They’d put our family at a special table up front, next to where Diane and John sat, where everyone could look at us. And from where we sat, facing everyone else, it was easy to see the sidelong glances, the people whispering together and the headshaking. Nobody had forgotten about Rennie, not really.
As soon as I finished eating, I left the table. Uncle Gregory had collected lawn games from all my other relatives, to give the childings something to do while the adults finished eating and got ready for the dancing. I didn’t try to join any of the games myself. I just wandered from one to the next, looking. I was watching some of my cousins-once-removed play wickets with John’s younger brothers and sisters when a hand fell on my shoulder. I looked up and froze. It was Uncle Earn.
“So here you are, after all,” he said. His face was red, right up through the thin white fringe of hair and across his bald head, as if he’d been out in the sun too long. “Aren’t you satisfied yet, hellspawn?”
“S-satisfied?” I could hardly speak for terror. I’d gotten so used to being in Helvan Shores and not seeing Uncle Earn, and so taken up with Diane’s wedding, that it’d slipped my mind that I’d have to avoid him afterward.
Uncle Earn gave me a hard shake. “Humiliating everyone like this. Wasn’t it enough that that girl ran off with her lover? But no, you had to make sure that all this—” he waved a hand, taking in all of Uncle Gregory’s yard, the older people still sitting at the tables or moving slowly from one to another, the younger folk gathering around the musicians setting up for the dancing, the children running in and out of the crowd “—that all this went on, instead of being delayed a decent interval until the talk died down.”
“I—I never—”
“Liar!” Uncle Earn shook me even harder. “I heard the whole thing from Mari. If you hadn’t been there, Diane would have agreed to wait, like a sensible person.”
“I didn’t say anything to Diane!”
“You don’t have to say anything. You’re bad luck, wherever you are. It was your influence, you snake-in-the —”
“Earn!” Papa’s voice came from near to hand, startling both of us. Uncle Earn let go of my shoulder so fast that I lost my balance and sat down hard on the grass. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Seeing to the well-being of this family,” Uncle Earn said. “You certainly won’t! I expected you to learn a lesson from having that other girl of yours run off, but no, you still let this demon child run loose. And see the results!” He waved again, so extravagantly that he staggered.
Papa glared at Uncle Earn, and for a minute he was very still. Then he said in a careful, controlled tone, “This is Diane and John’s wedding, in case you’ve forgotten, Earn. It’s nothing to do with Eff.”
“You’re blind,” Uncle Earn said flatly. “It’s her fault, that misbegotten thirteenth child of yours. Open your eyes!”
“I think you’ve drunk a few too many healths to the bride,” Papa said. “You’d best go in and lie down for a while.”
“Oh, you’ll find any excuse to ignore my advice,” Uncle Earn snarled. “You think you’re better than the rest of us because you’re a seventh son. Well, I’m not drunk and I’m not letting you off so easily this time. It’s time you heard a few home truths, like it or not!”
Right about then, I pulled myself together enough to scoot back out of the way and look around. Papa and Uncle Earn were facing each other like a couple of prizefighters, and a ring of guests had collected around them. The cousins had stopped their game of wickets to listen, and I could see people hurrying over from farther off. Uncle Earn was ranting on about Papa being too proud of being a seventh son, and being so stubborn about having a seventh son himself that he’d gotten a thirteenth child, and then running off West with his double-seventh son, just when he’d finally gotten well enough known to do the family some good. I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach just listening to him.
Then I felt magic gathering around us, and I heard Lan’s voice say “Uncle Earn,” just as cold as the air the day the steam dragon fell on Mr. Stolz’s feed store, and I felt even sicker. I didn’t think Lan was going to pull the magic in and let it go this time. He was going to let loose, and there was no telling what the result would be. My legs were wobbly, but I struggled to my feet, just as Uncle Earn turned toward Lan and opened his mouth.
“Uncle Earn,” I said, loud and clear as I could. “If it’s me you have a grudge on, it’s me you’d ought to be talking to.”
Uncle Earn whipped around and stared at me, and I looked at him, and suddenly, I was madder than I’d ever been in my whole life. Because this time I didn’t see the frightening oldest uncle who’d tried to have me arrested when I was five. I saw a selfish, pompous, ignorant old man, who didn’t even think about how he was ruining Diane’s wedding worse than ever Rennie had. He didn’t see that Papa and Lan were just before doing something dreadful because of the things he’d been saying. And he was certain-sure to blame me for everything, when he got around to noticing the consequences of what he’d done.
Well, if he was going to blame me anyway, I decided that I was going to give him something to blame me for. At least I could try to keep Lan from cutting loose—no matter what I did, I figured it couldn’t possibly be as bad as a double-seventh son letting go of his temper.
