Here we go.
“Right this way,” Charlotte said brightly. She led Ursula through a double-wide set of doors toward the east, which led into a little arena she’d set aside for women with wardrobe malfunctions and sore feet. The place was parlor-like, with antique furniture, old-world paintings, and a gorgeous golden statue of a peacock.
Ursula collapsed in a heap on an antique fainting couch, which seemed fitting.
Charlotte remained standing.
“Charlotte, Charlotte, darling,” Ursula said. She puckered her overly bright red lips together and made a little, horrible noise. “I don’t know what I was thinking, assuming you could put together exactly what I wanted in only a few weeks.”
Neither do I.
“In any case, I mean, it’s absolutely fine...” Ursula said, furrowing her brow. “Only that, I noticed you didn’t take my flower specifications to heart? What do you mean by this?”
Charlotte remembered a number of “recommendations” from Ursula regarding flowers. The girl had changed her mind so many times that Charlotte had grown dizzy.
“My sister is the florist involved in the wedding,” Charlotte said. She kept her voice up, chipper. “Would you like me to get her so that we can discuss this in better detail?”
“I don’t see that that’s necessary. In my mind, you’re the wedding planner. Everything should have gone through you first,” Ursula said. She lifted her perfectly manicured nails and tapped them against her thumb. “I suppose when my friends ask me why everything isn’t absolutely stellar, I’ll have to report this to them.”
You mean, when they finish taking selfies of themselves and gossiping? When they notice that everything isn’t precisely to your liking? When will that happen? When could they ever look outside themselves?
“Perhaps I can fix this before the reception tomorrow,” Charlotte said instead. She had to. This was the client, for goodness sake. “It’s going to be held in the other ballroom, on the opposite side of the mansion. It’s the fancier of the two, the one the original owners had built for their wedding back in the 1800s.”
“How quaint,” Ursula said.
If you don’t like history, why did you choose to have your wedding on Martha’s Vineyard?
“As long as you understand what I feel, I suppose we must move forward,” Ursula said, again heaving a sigh. She glanced down at her shoes in those impossibly-high six-inch heels.
You just wanted to yell at someone while you rested your feet.
“I guess I should go greet my guests. I do hope Orion gets here soon. It will be difficult to marry him if he never arrives,” Ursula said with an ironic laugh.
“Did you not travel together?”
“No. I was in Sicily, as you know, and he was in LA with his teammates celebrating the last of his bachelor days.”
“Right.”
“Do you think he did anything really bad? Something I wouldn’t approve of?” Ursula asked suddenly. Her face clenched up. “I mean, did you read anything in the tabloids or...”
Charlotte furrowed her brow. She certainly hadn’t expected this—Ursula showing just how low her self-esteem could go.
“No. Nothing like that has been reported. Just that he had a good time out west,” she said.
Like I’ve had time to read a tabloid magazine while putting together this wedding.
“Oh, good. That’s fantastic news. I wouldn’t want that kind of gossip to follow me around at the rehearsal dinner,” Ursula said. She then prepared a vibrant smile and popped up from the fainting couch. When she reached the doorway, she said, “I suppose the ballroom looks fine. A bit lackluster, but nothing outrageously out of line.”
Charlotte lifted her hand, preparing to demand Ursula stay. She had to go through a number of things for the next hours, including the schedule of events, just to make sure Ursula knew when to head where, and what happened next. As a wedding planner, she had outlined when toasts were meant to happen, when the dancing would begin, and when they had to clear the ballroom for the night.
Clearly, Ursula didn’t care about that sort of thing. She bolted through the door and left Charlotte swimming in doubt and annoyance.
Rachel appeared in the crack of the doorway only a second later.
“Mom!” she called.
“Oh, God. What happened now?” Charlotte asked.
But Rachel came forward and wrapped her arms around her in answer. Charlotte placed her chin on her daughter’s shoulder, suddenly overwhelmed. She could have lived in that hug forever.
“What’s up?” Charlotte finally asked, unable to recognize her own voice.
Rachel drew back. She gripped her mother with hard fingers. “I heard what she said to you. I’m so mad for you. You worked so hard on this.”
Charlotte closed her eyes. “I figured something like this would happen, Pumpkin. Don’t worry about it, though. It’s not my first rodeo.”
“But she’s evil. Why couldn’t she just say thank you? I mean, you pulled off this incredible night. All the celebrities out there are in awe of the entire setting. I’ve already seen the event featured on Instagram Live like, twelve times,” Rachel said.
Charlotte sniffed just once, the only proof she was willing to give her daughter that she felt down in the dumps. “Then, we’ve done exactly what we were set out to do. Ursula won’t remember belittling me tonight. She’ll only remember the photos that are taken, what’s written about the event, that sort of thing. So it’s up to us to keep going. Keep fighting—no matter what happens next.”
That moment, the speaker system was turned on. Ursula’s voice barreled out of every speaker in the ballroom.
“No!” Charlotte cried. “It’s too soon. The quintet is supposed to play for another hour during cocktails...”
She hustled back toward the ballroom, very nearly tripping on her dress. When she reached it, she found almost every table already filled. Every shade of pink, purple, dark green and dark yellow and burgundy blared back at her; diamond earrings glittered from nearly every ear. The perfume seemed like a kind of cloud over everything, mixing and shoving itself through Charlotte’s nostrils.
Ursula stood near the Christmas tree with her
