through, no identification requested. Some security.
My cell phone buzzed and I glanced at the caller ID. Oh, I should have expected it: Billie Attenborough. Sometimes I wished I were a lawyer, and could charge for calls. With the way Billie was always phoning, phoning, phoning—why, I could have retired.
I could just imagine Billie tossing her blond mane and complaining, bitterly and loudly, that I was refusing to talk to her. I knew that losing weight could make people grouchy, but in Billie’s case, it was making her certifiable.
I ignored the cell and parked as near the event center’s side entrance as I could get. Tom was still behind me. Then I flipped up the hood on my rain jacket and hopped out of the van.
“Forget it,” Tom called through the downpour. “You’re not unloading the van in this weather. I’ll do it.”
“Oh no you won’t!” I replied.
I’d been single for a long time before marrying Tom, and he’d been unattached even longer. This had made us, as the saying goes, set in our ways, which is French for
As Tom was sliding open the van’s side door, my cell phone beeped again. Could it be Arch? My son was enjoying the last of his summer vacation by spending night after night either at the home of his half brother, Gus— the product of one of the Jerk’s flings, whom I had embraced after his mother died—or at Arch’s best friend Todd Druckman’s house. Sometimes the three of them stayed at Todd’s before decamping back to Gus’s, or vice versa. There was no way Arch and his pals would be up this early, but I always worried. As I checked the caller ID again, I thought if it was Billie, I would disconnect the phone. Arch could call Tom if he was in a real jam.
It was not Arch. It was Julian. Even if most twenty-two-year-olds had trouble rousing themselves from bed to get to work, Julian’s ambition of becoming a vegetarian chef meant he was always up early, scouring Boulder’s farmers’ markets, and then taking off to help me, or showing up to toil long hours in a vegetarian bistro near the University of Colorado.
“You’re not going to believe this,” he began, and I thought if his inherited Range Rover had broken down on the way over from Boulder, I would throw myself into the lake.
“Is what ever you’re about to tell me going to upset me?” I asked as Tom heaved up a stack of plastic- wrapped trays.
“Hi, Billie!” Tom yelled into the cell phone before schlepping his load toward the kitchen door.
“What is Billie Attenborough doing at Ceci’s wedding?” Julian asked in disbelief. “Was that Tom talking to her?”
“No, Julian, that was Tom trying to be funny. He thought I was on the phone with Bridezilla. Now, what am I not going to believe?”
“Billie just called me.”
“She’s very pissed off that you’re not answering your phone. She says she needs to talk to you, and if you don’t start answering, she’s going to come find you. She sounded as if she meant it.”
“I hope you didn’t tell her where I was going to be.”
“Nope. But you know how she is.”
I did indeed. Once when I’d refused to answer our home phone or my cell, Billie had driven over to our house and started knocking on the front door. I was busy cooking for a party, so instead of answering, I’d nipped into the bathroom. Billie traipsed around back and started tapping on the windows that Tom had installed to face our backyard. Still getting no response, Billie returned to her Mercedes convertible and leaned on the horn. I came out of the bathroom and watched through our partially closed blinds as Billie continued to honk. Finally, Jack came out of his house and yelled that he was calling the cops. His pal Doc Finn, who had preceded Jack out the front door to watch the action, had shaken his head.
Jack hollered, “They’ll throw you in jail for disturbing the peace, Billie!”
Of course, Jack would never have reported Billie. But his years as a practicing lawyer always made him sound convincing. Billie had roared away in her convertible, but not before proffering an obscene gesture in my godfather’s direction.
Yes, I said to Julian, as my call-waiting began to beep, I did indeed know how Billie was. I ignored the beeping.
Julian said he didn’t want to worry me, just give me a heads-up. Then he asked how things were going. I told him about the security guards, and he wanted to know if there was anything he should say to them so he could be let into the parking lot.
“Just tell them you’re with the caterer. They seem pretty bored.”
Before signing off, Julian said that the rain was making everyone on the highway slow down, but he should be at our event center in less than an hour. I stepped into the chilly deluge, heaved up the last box of food, and splashed through the mud to the kitchen door.
There, Tom was already unpacking.
“Father Pete just called,” Tom informed me. Father Pete was our parish priest at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and was doing the O’Neal ceremony. “He couldn’t get through to you. Anyway, he’ll be here early.”
“Great. I was on the phone with Julian. Billie called him, looking for me.”
Tom shook his head. I thanked him for bringing in the lion’s share of the boxes and said I would be right back, just after I checked on the dining room.
There, all was lovely. Rows of chairs had been custom fit by Dodie in a luscious pink sateen; she’d sewn the slipcovers, and made Cecelia’s wedding dress, herself. For the twelve-top tables, now pushed to one side and hidden behind a curtain, Aspen Meadow Florist had done a phenomenal job. Centerpieces of pale pink carnations, baby’s breath, and ivy had been Dodie O’Neal’s low-cost choice. Pink faux-linen napkins, also sewn by Dodie, looked exquisite next to the snowy white tablecloths.
As if to reassure myself, I said aloud, “Everything’s going to be great.”
If only.
3
Swathed in an apron, my handsome husband was refrigerating the trays of hors d’oeuvres that we would start to heat once the bridal procession began. Together, Tom and I finished unpacking and setting things in order. From time to time we consulted the printed schedule I had taped on the kitchen island. Julian arrived with the cake, a frothy pink and white three-layer confection that he had triple wrapped in plastic. Tom and I ooh’d and aah’d appropriately. Blushing with pride, Julian thanked us. With his wavy brown hair, clean- cut face, and compact swimmer’s body, Julian would be sure to attract a few ooh’s and aah’s himself, especially from the unattached twenty-something females who would be in attendance.
The three of us worked for the next hour and a half finishing our setup. Julian set the cake on its own special table behind the curtain with the twelve tops. Tom laid out row upon row of martini glasses. When the guests began to filter into the main dining room, Tom methodically filled each glass with shredded lettuce, then moved on to arranging poached shrimp on top. Just the sight of Tom bent so intently over his work warmed my heart. My good mood lasted until my cell phone tooted and I checked the caller ID again: Billie Attenborough. Aw, gee, why should I have been surprised?
Tom saw me make a face. “Now what?”
“Bridezilla Billie has some new demand.”
“Remind me when her wedding is.”
“Day after tomorrow.” I set the phone to Vibrate and put it in my apron pocket. “I’m still not taking her call.”
“Good idea,” Julian interjected.
“She’s nervous.” Tom’s tone was sympathetic. “Maybe she’ll find somebody else to bother. Don’t be too hard on her, Miss G.”
I shook my head. What ever reservoir of compassion I’d had for Billie Attenborough had dried up long ago.
When I was checking the temperature of the champagne Doc Finn would use for his toast, my cell phone buzzed against my skin. If it was Billie Attenborough again, I was going to turn it off. But it wasn’t Billie. It was Jack
