There, as the plane hovered somewhere over the top of Kansas, he shivered.
Maybe he should have returned to Seattle, made peace with his mother and brother.
Maybe he should have kicked a football around with his nephews, helped his mom bake a pie, exchange stories of his father with his brother.
Maybe he had made a huge mistake.
But no. He was already half-way to Boston. Martha’s Vineyard—and all that snow—awaited him. He couldn’t look back now.
Chapter Five
The day before Thanksgiving, Charlotte sat in a heap in the back of Claire’s flower shop. Claire sat across from her; Abby, Gail, and Rachel sat frozen in fear on either side. Before them was a mountain of flowers: roses, lily of the valley, hydrangeas, calla lilies, ranunculus—the list went on and on. The goal of the afternoon was to assimilate them together into several mock-ups for the final bouquet, which they would then decide upon together.
“And if Ursula hates them?” Claire asked breathlessly.
“Then I guess we’ll be back on the chopping block,” Charlotte said. “But she sent all these examples. She explained that this is her style. We just have to match them and then add a bit of flair to make them, you know...”
“Unique,” Claire interjected.
“Exactly.” Charlotte beamed at her sister.
“So simple,” Claire said. She rubbed her eyes, clearly exhausted. Charlotte couldn’t blame her. They had been hard at work—back-breaking work—for the previous three weeks. Now, with only three days left till the wedding, it felt as though they were at the tail-end of a marathon. Charlotte had made this comparison exactly once, to which Claire had said, “Yeah, as if you would ever run a marathon.” Naturally, this hadn’t helped.
Claire began to pair up various flowers, her brow furrowed. Charlotte shot up and headed toward her massive book of plans, in which she’d jotted necessary things to remember, phone numbers, people to call, the timeline of events. She had it all in her phone, as well, but she tended to like to have things physically in front of her. Rachel teased her for this.
“When does the bride get here again?” Claire called.
“Just after three on Friday,” Charlotte said.
“And when is Christine making the pies?”
Charlotte thought for a moment. “I think that’s happening now.”
“Maybe if you had asked me a few weeks ago, I would have told you that I would have stayed away from the pies, for the sake of the dress I’m wearing to this big event,” Claire said. “Not now. No way. Let me stress eat some pumpkin pie all day tomorrow because we need a break.”
Charlotte was grateful they had plotted and schemed so hard that they’d allowed themselves Thanksgiving Day off. She needed a day to sit with her mother over a glass of wine. She needed a day to spend with her older sister, Kelli, who she had never felt quite as close with. She wanted to laugh with her brother, Steven, the oldest one of all, along with his beautiful wife, Laura, and their two children, who were no longer children—Jonathon and Isabella. Naturally, when the Montgomery family got together, there was always that aching hole, where Andrew was meant to be.
But Andrew had long-since told them he wasn’t coming back. Charlotte knew better than not to take people at their word.
The Sheridan sisters came back. Why not Andrew, too?
Those were thoughts she had to shove into the back part of her mind.
“The second we wake up Friday morning, it’s going to be go-go-go again,” Claire affirmed. “We have to stay focused.”
“Ursula is insane,” Abby said suddenly. She lifted her phone up and gestured with it. “She’s posting all these photos of her and her friends on her bachelorette trip to Sicily.”
“Sicily. Wow,” Charlotte breathed. “Let me see.”
Abby jumped up from her side of the flower collection and passed Charlotte the phone. There she was: this woman Charlotte had met only over the phone, stationed in a bikini in the sun alongside the sea. Her skin was bronzed from the sun and she was beautiful and thin. She had popped her knee out to one side like a model for the photograph. Around her were a collection of other sinfully beautiful women, maybe her bridesmaids?
“How many bridesmaids did she say she has?” Claire asked, glancing at the photo.
“Only four,” Charlotte answered. “Which I was surprised about. I’ve heard of women like this having upwards of twenty.”
“We couldn’t handle twenty,” Claire said, scoffing. “I would be on the floor crying with twenty.”
“You’re going to be on the floor crying, regardless. And I’m going to be right there with you,” Charlotte said.
“I don’t understand. Why does she want to have a snowy wedding on Martha’s Vineyard if she has access to— Sicily?” Gail asked.
“What kind of talk is that?” Charlotte said, teasing her. “Isn’t the Vineyard good enough for you?”
Suddenly, the door to the flower shop burst open. Snow fluttered in beautifully as Christine ducked inside, tugging her winter hat off her head. She lifted a brown bag and shook it.
“I figured you girls would want some croissants for fuel?”
“More than anything,” Rachel affirmed.
Christine grinned and tugged out the croissants, splaying them on a clean plate. “It’s really coming down out there. I hope our Ursula is pleased. She’ll have a snow-capped wedding, after all.”
As the girls snacked on croissants, Christine scanned her phone and talked about the wedding cake. “I swear, that thing is one of the prettier things I’ve ever made, but it’s nearly killed me.”
“Welcome to the club. We all deserve a spa weekend after this,” Claire said.
Suddenly, Christine stopped short, lifted her head, and gave them a bug-eyed look.
“What? What is that look for?” Charlotte demanded.
Christine turned her phone toward Charlotte to show an article from a tabloid magazine.
Is the Multi-Million Dollar Wedding Between Ursula and Orion Canceled?
“What?” Charlotte demanded. Her heart felt squeezed. “No. No, no...” She read through the
