“Of course I’m not ready,” I said. “But you’re not either.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Oh, really? Answer me this: Does Sheri prefer dogs or cats?”
“I don’t—” He blinked.
“Yes, because it’s only been two weeks,” I said. “You remember that lump on your forehead? It took longer than two weeks to get that biopsied, but you’re prepared to marry a woman you haven’t even known long enough for a biopsy.”
My voice was getting higher, and Dad put his hands out in an inside voice, please gesture. I would have tried, but I felt as if I was hitting my stride in making my point. I went for the crushing blow.
“Dad, do you even know whether she’s a pie or cake sort of person?”
“I . . . um . . .”
“Do you realize you’re contemplating spending the rest of your life with a person who might celebrate birthdays with pie?”
“Chels, I know this is coming at you pretty fast,” he said. “I do, but I don’t think Sheri liking pie or cake is really that big of a deal. Who knows, she might be an ice cream person, and ice cream goes with everything.”
“Mom was a cake person,” I said. There. I’d done it. I’d brought in the biggest argument against this whole rushed matrimonial insanity. Mom.
My father’s smile vanished as if I’d snuffed it out between my fingers like a match flame. I felt lousy about it, but not quite as lousy as I did at the thought of Sheri—oh, but no—becoming my stepmother.
“Your mother’s been gone for seven years, Chels,” he said. “That’s a long time for a person to be alone.”
“But you haven’t been alone . . . apparently,” I protested. “Besides, you have me and Annabelle.”
“I do.”
“So why do you need to get married?” I pressed.
Dad sighed. “Because I love Sheri and I want to make her my wife.”
I gasped. I felt as if he’d slapped me across the face. Yes, I knew I was reacting badly, but this was my father. The man who had sworn to love my mother until death do them part. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Mom had passed away, and Dad had been alone ever since, right up until he met Sheri Armstrong two weeks ago when she just kept raising her auction paddle for the marginally hot mathematician.
I got it. Really, I did. I’d been known to have bidding fever when a mint pair of Jimmy Choos showed up on eBay. It was hard to let go of something when it was in your grasp, especially when another bidder kept raising the stakes. But this was my dad, not shoes.
One of the bridal-salon employees came by with a tray of mimosas. I grabbed two, double fisting the sparkling beverage. Sweet baby Jesus, I hoped there was more fizz than pulp in them. The bubbles hit the roof of my mouth, and I wished they could wash away the taste of my father’s startling news, but they didn’t.
“Listen, I know that being the object of desire by a crowd of single, horny women is heady stuff—”
“Really, you know this?” Dad propped his chin in his hand as he studied me with his eyebrows raised and a twinkle in his eye.
“Okay, not exactly, but my point—and I have one—is that you and Sheri aren’t operating in the real world here,” I said. “I understand that Sheri is feeling quite victorious, having won you, but that doesn’t mean she should wed you. I mean, why do you have to marry her? Why can’t you just live in sin like other old people?”
“Because we love each other and we want to be married.”
“You can’t know this so soon,” I argued. “It’s not possible. Her representative hasn’t even left yet.”
My dad frowned, clearly not understanding.
“The first six months to a year, you’re not really dating a person,” I explained. “You’re dating their representative. The real person, the one who leaves the seat up and can’t find the ketchup in the fridge even when it’s right in front of him, doesn’t show up until months into the relationship. Trust me.”
“What are you talking about? Of course I’m dating a person. I can assure you, Sheri is very much a woman,” he said. “Boy howdy, is she.” The tips of his ears turned red, and I felt my own face get hot with embarrassment. I forged on.
“Dad, first, ew,” I said. “And second, a person’s representative is their best self. After two weeks, you haven’t seen the real Sheri yet. The real Sheri is hiding behind the twenty-four-seven perfect hair and makeup, the placid temper, the woman who thinks your dad jokes are funny. They’re not.”
“No, no, no.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen her without makeup. She’s still beautiful. And she does have a temper—just drive with her sometime. I’ve learned some new words. Very educational. And my dad jokes are too funny.”
I rolled my eyes. I was going to have to do some tough love here. I was going to have to be blunt.
“Dad, I hate to be rude, but you’re giving me no choice. She’s probably only marrying you for your money,” I said. Ugh, I felt like a horrible person for pointing it out, but he needed protection from gold diggers. It was a kindness, really.
To my surprise, he actually laughed. “Sheri is more well off than I am by quite a lot. I’m the charity case in this relationship.”
“Then why on earth does she want to marry you?” I asked.
The words flew out before I had the brains to stifle them. It was a nasty thing to say. I knew that, but I was freaked out and frantic and not processing very well.
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” I began, but he cut me off.
“Despite what you think, I’m quite a catch in middle-aged circles.”
He stood, retrieving his coat from a nearby coatrack. As he shrugged into it, a flash of hurt crossed his face that made my stomach ache. I loved my father. I wouldn’t inflict pain upon him for anything, and yet I had. I’d hurt him very much. I felt lower than sludge.
“I’m sorry, Dad. Really, I didn’t mean—” But again he cut me off.
“You did mean it, and, sadly, I’m not even surprised,” he said. “Listen, I have mourned the loss of your mother every day since she passed, and I will mourn her every day for the rest of my life, but I have found someone who makes me happy, and I want to spend my life with her. That doesn’t take away what I had with your mother.”
“Doesn’t it?” I argued. This. This was what had been bothering me since his announcement. How could he not see that by replacing my mother, he was absolutely diminishing what they’d had? “Sheri’s going to take your name, isn’t she? And she’s going to move into our house, right? So everything that was once Mom’s—the title of Mrs. Glen Martin and the house where she loved and raised her family—you’re just giving to another woman. The next thing I know, you’ll tell me I have to call her Mom.”
A guilty expression flitted across his face.
“No.” I shook my head. “Absolutely not.”
“I’m not saying you have to call her that. It’s just Sheri’s never had a family of her own, and she mentioned in passing how much she was looking forward to having daughters. It would be nice if you could think about how good it would be to have a mother figure in your life again.”
“I am not her daughter, and I never will be,” I said. My chest heaved with indignation. “How can you pretend that all of that isn’t erasing Mom?”
Dad stared down at me with his head to the side and his right eyebrow arched, a double whammy of parental disappointment. He wrapped his scarf about his neck and pulled on his gloves.
“You know what? I don’t know if Sheri will take my name. We haven’t talked about it,” he said. “As for the house, I am planning to sell it so we can start our life together somewhere new.”
I sucked in a breath. My childhood home. Gone? Sold? To strangers? I thought I might throw up. Instead, I polished off one of the mimosas.
“Sheri and I are getting married in three m
onths,” he said. “We’re planning a nice June wedding, and we very much want you to be a part of it.”
“As a flower girl?” I scoffed. “Whose crazy idea was that?”
“It was Sheri’s,” he said. His mouth tightened. “She’s never been married before, and she’s a little excited. It’s actually quite lovely to see.”
“A thirty-year-old flower girl,” I replied, as tenacious as a tailgater in traffic. I just couldn’t let it go.
“All right, I get it. Come as anything you want, then,” he said. “You can give me away, be my best man, be a bridesmaid, or officiate the damn thing. I don’t care. I just want you there. It would mean everything to Sheri and me to have your blessing.”
I stared at him. The mild-mannered Harvard math professor who had taught me to throw a curveball, ride a bike, and knee a boy in the junk if he got too fresh had never looked so determined. He meant it. He was going to marry Sheri Armstrong, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
“I . . . I.” My words stalled out. I wanted to say that it was okay, that he deserved to be happy, and that I’d be there in any capacity he wanted, but I choked. I sat there with my mouth opening and closing like a fish on dry land, trying to figure out how to mouth breathe.
My father turned up his collar, bracing for the cold March air. He looked equal parts disappointed and frustrated. “Don’t strain yourself.”
He turned away as I sat frozen. I hated this. I didn’t want us to part company like this, but I was so shocked by this sudden turn of events, I was practically catatonic. I waited, feeling miserable, for him to walk away, but instead he turned back toward me. Rather than being furious with me, which might have caused me to dig in my heels and push back, he looked sad.
“What happened to you, peanut?” he asked. “You used to be the girl with the big heart who was going to save the world.”
I didn’t say anything. His disappointment and confusion washed over me like a bath of sour milk.
“I grew up,” I said. But even to my own ears I sounded defensive.
He shook his head. “No, you didn’t. Quite the opposite. You stopped growing at all.”
“Are you kidding me? In the past seven years, I’ve raised millions to help the fight against cancer. How can you say I haven’t grown?” I asked. I was working up a nice froth of indignation. “I’m trying to make a difference in the world.”
“That’s your career,” he said. “Being great at your profession doesn’t mean you’ve grown personally. Chels, look at your life. You work seven days a week. You never take time off. You don’t date. You have no friends. Heck, if we didn’t have a standing brunch date, I doubt I’d ever see you except on holidays. Since your mother passed, you’ve barricaded yourself emotionally from all of us. What kind of life is that?”
I turned my head to stare out the window at Boylston Street. I couldn’t believe my father was dismissing how hard I worked for the American Cancer Coalition. I had busted my butt to become the top corporate fundraiser in the organization, and with the exception of one annoying coworker, my status was unquestioned.
He sighed. I couldn’t look at him. “Chels, I’m not saying what you’ve accomplished isn’t important. It’s just that you’ve changed over the past few years. I can’t remember the last time you brought someone special home for me to meet. It’s as if you’ve sealed yourself off since your mother—”
I whipped my head in his direction, daring him to talk about my mother in the same conversation in which he’d announced he was remarrying.
“Chels, you’re here!” a voice cried from the fitting room entrance on the opposite side of the store. I glanced away from my dad to see my younger sister, Annabelle, standing there in an explosion of hot-pink satin and tulle trimmed with a wide swath of glittering crystals.
“What. Is. That?” I looked from Annabelle to our father and back. The crystals reflected the fluorescent light overhead, making me see spots, or perhaps I was having a stroke. Hard to say.
“It’s our dress!” Annabelle squealed. Then she twirled toward us. The long tulle skirt fanned out from the formfitting satin bodice, and Annabelle’s long dark curls streamed out around her. She looked like a demented fairy princess. “Do you love it or do you love it?”
“No, I don’t love it. It’s too pink, too poofy, and too much!” I cried. The seamstress glared at me, looking as if she were going to take some of the pins out of the pin cushion strapped to her wrist and come stab me a few hundred times. I lowered my voice a little. “Have you both gone insane? Seriously, what the hell is happening?”
Annabelle staggered to a stop. The spinning caused her to wobble a bit as she walked toward us, looking more like a drunk princess than a fey one.
“How can you be happy about this?” I snapped at her. I gestured to the dress. “Have you not known me for all of your twenty-seven years? How could you possibly think I would be okay with this?”
Annabelle grabbed the back of a chair to steady herself. “By ‘this’ do you mean the dress or the whole wedding thing?”
“Of course I mean the whole wedding thing,” I growled. “Dad is clearly having some midlife crisis, and there’s you just going along with it. Honestly, Annabelle, can’t you recognize an emergency when we’re having one?”
Annabelle blinked at me, looking perplexed. “What emergency? Dad’s getting married. It’s awesome. Besides, I feel like I have a vested interest given that it was my auction that brought Dad and Sheri together.”
“Because you, like Dad, have gone completely nuts!” I declared. “Two weeks is not long enough to determine whether you should marry someone or not. My god, it takes longer to get a passport. What are you thinking supporting this craziness?”
“Chels, that’s not fair and you know it,” Dad said.
My expression must have been full-on angry bear, because he changed tack immediately, his expression softening.
“When did you stop letting love into your heart?” he asked. His voice was gentler, full of parental concern that pinched like shoes that were too small, but I ignored the hurt. He didn’t get to judge me when he was marrying a person he barely knew. “Is this really how you want to live your life, Chels, with no one special to share it with? Because I don’t.”
I turned back to the window, refusing to answer. With a sigh weighty with disappointment, he left. I watched his reflection in the glass grow smaller and smaller as he departed. I couldn’t remember the last time we had argued, leaving harsh words between us festering like a canker sore. Ever since Mom had died, the awareness of how precious life was had remained ever present, and we always, always, said I love you at the end of a conversation, even when we weren’t getting along.
I thought about running after him and saying I was sorry, that I was happy for him and Sheri, but it would be a lie, and I knew I wasn’t a good enough actress to pull it off. I just couldn’t make myself do it. Instead, I tossed back my second mimosa, because mimosas, unlike family, were always reliable.
chapter two
WAIT HERE,” ANNABELLE said. “I’m going to change and we’ll talk, okay?”
I didn’t answer. Without acknowledging my sister at all, I put my empty glass on a nearby table, walked out of the bridal salon, and went in the opposite direction my father had taken. It was a dick move—I knew that—but I was too emotionally gutted to talk to anyone right now.
The phone calls started shortly after that. Annabelle called twice. I didn’t answer. Annabelle texted three times. I didn’t read them. Annabelle tried to video chat with me. No, just no. I was too angry—nope, that wasn’t quite it. Bewildered? Close, but that wasn’t it either.
No, what I was feeling was something in the middle of all the swirling emotions. I couldn’t place it. When I tried, it felt like extracting a tapioca ball out of my boba tea with a wide straw. I was afraid if I caught it, I’d choke.
I paused at a crosswalk, feeling March’s cold fingers pinch my cheeks like a passive-aggressive auntie. I zipped up my coat, wound my scarf around my neck, and pulled on my beanie. The sneaky brisk air still found ways to slip under my collar and reach my skin. Fortunately, I was too emotionally numb to feel it.
Betrayed. That’s what I was feeling. And it cut deep.
I walked the two and a half miles, including a particularly freezing stretch across the Longfellow Bridge, to my apartment, fuming with every step. You’d think my fury would warm me up. It didn’t. Mostly because Annabelle was relentless—like a honey badger, she didn’t give a shit—and kept calling and texting and calling and texting. I loved my sister like no other. Truly, she was my ride or die, but sometimes her tenacity positively wore me out.
I unlocked the door to my building and stepped into the vestibule, relieved to be out of the biting wind. The door locked automatically behind me as I took the stairs to my apartment. My phone chimed again, and this time, armed with a name for my emotions, I answered Annabelle’s call eagerly.
“When did Dad tell you?” I asked.
“Well, hello to you, too, Sis.” Annabelle’s voice dripped sarcasm but not surprise. “I thought you were never going to answer.”
I knew my younger sister was avoiding the question, and it served only to stoke the fire of my indignation. Not only was our father planning to get remarried, I’d bet big money he’d told Annabelle way before me. Shouldn’t he have told us together? It seemed a strong enough hook to hang my ire on.
“When?” I took off my winter wear and hung it on the coatrack on the backside of my front door. I paced my apartment, avoiding the squeaky board that ran down the middle. I lived on the second floor of a well-appointed three-story brownstone on Worcester Street in Cambridge. The windows were large, the floors wooden, and the place was as drafty as a train platform, but the view from the lone bedroom of the Dumpster in the alley below was unparalleled.
Paris Is Always a Good Idea Page 2