empire waist dresses with the pink satin sashes and their brown pillbox hats.
Marty fluffed her veil while Frannie retouched Leah’s lipstick. Lizzie was sitting on the floor, flipping through the baby book-Leah’s mother had brought it to put on the cake table for people to look at-and Jean sat beside her. It reminded her so much of the time they’d all spent upstairs in the turret room at Magdalene House that it made Leah’s eyes well up with tears.
“Oh no you don’t,” Frannie murmured, giving her a look of disapproval. “No crying! You’ll run your mascara!”
“Here, I’ve got one.” Marty clucked, opening her pocketbook and digging out a tissue.
Frannie grabbed it, touching just the corner of the Kleenex to the corner of Leah’s eye, letting it wick away the wetness.
“Nice technique,” Erica said, looking at Frannie with approval.
“Were you being naughty?” Leah blinked, frowning at her sister.
“They didn’t hear me.” Erica grinned. “Well, Clay saw me, but he just waved. He looks awfully dreamy in a suit.”
“You’re going to be making a trip like this down the aisle before you know it if you’re not careful,” Leah’s mother remarked, joining the group of girls.
“Oh no, not me.” Erica shook her head. “I’m going to move to California and become a news anchor.”
Patty Wendt raised her eyebrows, but she was smiling. “You really are my daughter, aren’t you?”
Leah met her mother’s eyes in the mirror, so proud of how well she’d taken the news that Erica had accidentally let slip just a few hours before, while they were all in the kitchen fighting access to the coffee percolator. Patty Wendt had taken it in stride, taking Erica by the arm and leading her out of the kitchen. They had disappeared up to the loft for an hour and Leah didn’t know what the two of them said to each other, but they both came down dabbing their eyes with Kleenex and laughing, so it couldn’t have been too bad.
“Oh, I almost forgot your something old.” Leah’s mother opened her pocketbook, looking through it. “And no, it’s isn’t me!”
The girls laughed and then gasped when she pulled out a small box, opening it to reveal two pearl earrings.
“Oh Mom…” Leah gaped at her as Patty clipped them to her ears. She’d never been allowed to get them pierced.
“They were your grandmothers.” Patty stepped back, cocking her head, and smiling. “You are the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen.”
“I went to the bank and got your something new.” Erica stepped forward, holding out a shiny copper penny in her palm. “1958. You can put it in your shoe.”
Leah gathered up the fabric of her dress, lifting her foot so Erica could slide the penny into her white satin shoe.
“Keep your skirt up, girlie.” Frannie grinned, producing a white garter with a blue satin bow. “Here’s your something blue.”
Leah blushed and they all laughed as Frannie slid it up her calf. Leah took hold of it and slid it the rest of the way up her thigh. “I guess all I need now is-”
“Something borrowed,” Marty said. “Since it’s supposed to be from someone who’s in a happy, stable marriage, I was elected.”
“I’m so glad you’re happy,” she breathed as Marty touched her cheek to Leah’s, pressing her ‘something borrowed’ into Leah’s hand.
“This is for your happy tears,” Marty whispered back.
Leah looked down at the handkerchief monogrammed with her friend’s initials and felt her eyes tearing up again.
“Noooo!” Frannie protested. “No crying until after the pictures!”
The door opened and a dark face peeked in. It was the pastor’s daughter-Aretha-the one Erica had arranged to sing after the exchange of vows.
“It’s time,” she called, smiling at all of them standing there. “Time to get married!”
The girls gathered around Leah, already squealing and giggling in anticipation, gathering their bouquets of pale pink and white roses and handing over Leah’s. Hers was double in size, and all her roses were a light blush, the palest pink.
“Ready?” Leah’s mother asked, taking her daughter’s arm.
“You look beautiful, Mom,” Leah whispered. It wasn’t the blush-colored mother-of-the bride dress she was wearing, it was the smile on her face, the sparkle in her mother’s eyes. She’d never seen her look so light or free. The secret her mother had been carrying hadn’t just hardened her, it had dimmed her, but now that she’d opened up about it, something about Patty Wendt absolutely shined.
Erica looked at their mother, cocking her head and smiling. “You do, Mom.”
“So do you, girls.” Patty Wendt started blinking fast, tilting her head back. “Oh no, not the waterworks!”
Leah came to the rescue and handed over Marty’s borrowed handkerchief to Erica, who wiped away their mother’s happy tears as the girls all lined up, the music already filling the church. Leah smiled at her mother as she took the handkerchief back, keeping it in her hand, hidden by her bouquet.
She had a feeling she was going to need it.
Leah thought she couldn’t top that moment when Erica called Patty “Mom,” just before Leah took her mother’s arm and walked down the aisle.
But then she saw the look on Rob’s face when he first glimpsed her in her wedding dress, the pride and love there shining like a light meant just for her, and she was sure then nothing could get better than that.
Until the moment Father Michael pronounced them husband and wife, and Rob lifted her veil and gathered her up and kissed her as the dark angel behind them broke into glorious song and she thought she’d never felt so beautiful, had never heard anything so beautiful, would never in her life experience anything this beautiful again.
But if her wedding day had been the most delightful, enchanting day of her life, like walking into the pages of a fairy tale, her honeymoon surpassed it by light years. Her wedding had taken place on the planet Earth, and while she felt as if she were floating through the day like an angel or a goddess, there had been reminders of everyday life to keep her at least a little grounded.
Every day things like exchanging addresses and phone numbers with all her bridesmaids, knowing she wouldn’t see them again for a long time. Things like meeting Marty’s tall, tanned, real-cowboy husband, who shook her hand in the receiving line and said, “Congratulations to you and your bloke, Sheila,” and Leah had been too embarrassed to correct him on getting her name wrong, and thank goodness she had been, because Marty explained later while they dancing to Chubby Checker’s Twist, that her husband had just been using an Australian term of endearment.
She had glimpsed Ada crying through the ceremony while Solie handed her Kleenex out of the depths of her considerable cleavage, like an endless scarf-pulling magic trick, using the space between her voluminous breasts as a tissue dispenser for Ada on one side of her and Leah’s mother on the other. Between the three of them they cried a happy river of tears.
Leah saw Erica dancing with that Clayton boy, her blond head resting on his shoulder, eyes closed, and she wondered how long it would be before they were doing this again for her, in spite of Erica protests about running off into the big, wide world and becoming a journalist. Erica had, after all, caught the bouquet.
All of those things kept pulling Leah back down to earth throughout the day and into the evening as their guests ate dinner and drank champagne and toasted the happy couple and rapped on their glasses with their knives so often Leah thought her lips would get chapped from the kisses initiated by that long-standing tradition. Not that she minded kissing Rob. Not at all.
By the time she’d changed into her brown pinstriped going-away outfit, she was more than ready for her honeymoon to begin. The long stares Rob had been giving her all night, that dark, wolfish look in his eyes, had made her knees wobbly and her belly a roiling sea of emotion. She hardly ate anything, too distracted, and anyway, fairy tale creatures didn’t need human sustenance, did they?
Leah kissed all her bridesmaids goodbye and hugged her sister the tightest, thanking her for everything,
