Keeper of the Bride

man — showed up with the note. Robert didn’t even have the nerve to tell me himself.” She shook her head in disgust.

“What did the note say?”

“That he needed more time. And he was leaving town for a while. That’s all.”

“Is it possible Robert had any reason to—”

“No, it’s not possible!” She looked him straight in the eye. “You’re asking if Robert had something to do with it. Aren’t you?”

“I keep an open mind, Miss Cormier.”

“Robert’s not capable of violence. For God’s sake, he’s a doctor!”

“All right. For the moment, we’ll let that go. Let’s look at other possibilities. I take it you’re employed?”

“I’m a nurse at Maine Medical Center.”

“Which department?”

“Emergency room.”

“Any problems at work? Any conflicts with the rest of the staff?”

“No. We get along fine.”

“Any threats? From your patients, for instance?”

She made a sound of exasperation. “Detective, wouldn’t I know if I had enemies?”

“Not necessarily.”

“You’re trying your damn best to make me feel paranoid.”

“I’m asking you to step back from yourself. Examine your personal life. Think of all the people who might not like you.”

Nina sank back in the seat. All the people who might not like me. She thought of her family. Her older sister, Wendy, with whom she’d never been close. Her mother, Lydia, married to her wealthy snob of a husband. Her father, George, now on his fourth wife, a blond trophy bride who considered her husband’s offspring a nuisance. It was one big, dysfunctional family, but there were certainly no murderers among them.

She shook her head. “No one, Detective. There’s no one.”

After a moment he sighed and closed his notebook. “All right, Miss Cormier. I guess that’s all for now.”

“For now?”

“I’ll probably have other questions. After I talk to the rest of the wedding party.” He opened the car door, got out, and pushed the door shut. Through the open window he said, “If you think of anything, anything at all, give me a call.” He scribbled in his notebook and handed her the torn page with his name, Detective Samuel I. Navarro, and a phone number. “It’s my direct line,” he said. “I can also be reached twenty-four hours a day through the police switchboard.”

“Then…I can go home now?”

“Yes.” He started to walk away.

“Detective Navarro?”

He turned back to her. She had not realized how tall he was. Now, seeing his lean frame at its full height, she wondered how he’d ever fit in the seat beside her. “Is there something else, Miss Cormier?” he asked.

“You said I could leave.”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t have a ride.” She nodded toward the bombed-out church. “Or a phone either. Do you think you could give my mother a call? To come get me?”

“Your mother?” He glanced around, obviously anxious to palm off this latest annoyance. Finally, with a look of resignation, he circled around to her side of the car and opened the door. “Come on. We can go in my car. I’ll drive you.”

“Look, I was only asking you to make a call.”

“It’s no trouble.” He extended his hand to help her out. “I’d have to go by your mother’s house anyway.”

“My mother’s house? Why?”

“She was at the wedding. I’ll need to talk to her, too. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.”

What a gallant way to put it, she thought.

He was still reaching out to her. She ignored his outstretched hand. It was a struggle getting out of the car, since her train had wrapped itself around her legs, and she had to kick herself free of the hem. By the time she’d finally extricated herself from the car, he was regarding her with a look of amusement. She snatched up her train and whisked past him in a noisy rustle of satin.

“Uh, Miss Cormier?”

“What?” she snapped over her shoulder.

“My car’s in the other direction.”

She halted, her cheeks flushing. Mr. Detective was actually smiling now, a full-blown ate-the-canary grin.

“It’s the blue Taurus,” he pointed out. “The door’s unlocked. I’ll be right with you.” He turned and headed away, toward the gathering of cops.

Nina flounced over to the blue Taurus. There she peered in disgust through the window. She was supposed to ride in this car? With that mess? She opened the door. A paper cup tumbled out. On the passenger floor was a crumpled McDonald’s bag, more coffee cups, and a two-day-old Portland Press Herald. The back seat was buried under more newspapers, file folders, a briefcase, a suit jacket, and — of all things — a baseball mitt.

She scooped up the debris from the passenger side, tossed it into the back, and climbed in. She only hoped the seat was clean.

Detective Cold Fish was walking toward the car. He looked hot and harassed. His shirtsleeves were rolled up now, his tie yanked loose. Even as he tried to leave the scene, cops were pulling him aside to ask questions.

At last he slid in behind the wheel and slammed the door. “Okay, where does your mother live?” he asked.

“Cape Elizabeth. Look, I can see you’re busy—”

“My partner’s holding the fort. I’ll drop you off, talk to your mother, and swing by the hospital to see Reverend Sullivan.”

“Great. That way you can kill three birds with one stone.”

“I do believe in efficiency.”

They drove in silence. She saw no point in trying to dredge up polite talk. Politeness would go right over this man’s head. Instead, she looked out the window and thought morosely about the wedding reception and all those finger sandwiches waiting for guests who’d never arrive. She’d have to call and ask for the food to be delivered to a soup kitchen before it all spoiled. And then there were the gifts, dozens of them, piled up at home. Correction —Robert’s home. It had never really been her home. She had only been living there, a tenant. It had been her idea to pay half the mortgage. Robert used to point out how much he respected her independence, her insistence on a separate identity. In any good relationship, he’d say, privilege as well as responsibility was a fifty-fifty split. That’s how they’d worked it from the start. First he’d paid for a date, then she had. In fact, she’d insisted, to show him that she was her own woman.

Now it all seemed so stupid.

I was never my own woman, she thought. I was always dreaming, longing for the day I’d be Mrs. Robert Bledsoe. It’s what her family had hoped for, what her mother had expected of her: to marry well. They’d never understood Nina’s going to nursing school, except as a way to meet a potential mate. A doctor. She’d met one, all right.

And all it’s gotten me is a bunch of gifts I have to return, a wedding gown I can’t return, and a day I’ll never, ever live down.

It was the humiliation that shook her the most. Not the fact that Robert had walked out. Not even the fact that she could have died in the wreckage of that church. The explosion itself seemed unreal to her, as remote as some TV melodramas. As remote as this man sitting beside her.

“You’re handling this very well,” he said.