As Far as the Stars

by Virginia MacGregor

And by the time he’s finished singing, everyone will have forgotten that he was even late.

  And everyone will forgive him.

  ‘Ariadne!’ Mom’s voice booms across the roof terrace.

  She runs towards me.

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’

  Her face is flushed, her arms flail around her, expressing the frustration and incredulity she’s feeling at how late I am. But behind the stress, she’s beautiful. She’s wearing the same shade of blue as my bridesmaid’s dress and as the silk draping the chairs. The colour of Jude’s eyes – and of Blake’s eyes too. Her trim jacket pinches in at her waist, under it a fitted skirt. She made it herself. She’s made every bit of this wedding herself. She didn’t trust anyone else to get it right.

  ‘They’re here! We can start!’ Mom calls over to Reverend Drew, who’s milling around with some of the guests.

  Rev Drew married Mom and Dad and baptised every one of us, and even though he’s retired and ancient, he agreed to come to Nashville to marry Jude and Stephen.

  He gives her a nod and goes over to talk to Stephen, who’s standing with his best man, Josh, the friend he’s had since he was in middle school. Stephen waves at me, his face flooded with relief at the fact that I’ve shown up.

  I’m sorry, I want to tell him.

  Sorry for adding to everyone’s stress.

  Sorry for not getting Blake here on time.

  Sorry, in advance, for making a total hash of the song.

  Mom turns back to me.

  ‘Will you put that dog down, Ariadne.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your dress.’

  Oh God, she’s seen the hem.

  Mom nods at Leda. ‘She’s shedding on your dress.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ I put Leda down and bend my knees a bit, hoping that the hem will keep covering my sneakers and kind of fold over itself and disguise the tear.

  Leda rubs her head against Mom’s ankles like a cat.

  Mom shakes her off and looks at her watch.

  I notice the kennel in the corner of the roof terrace. It has a bow on it too. And my heart sinks.

  She looks over my shoulder.

  ‘Where’s Blake?’

  I feel sick.

  She looks back at the suit and the hat box I’m carrying.

  ‘And why isn’t he dressed already?’

  I take Mom’s hand and get her to focus on me for a second.

  ‘Mom,’

  Her eyes flit around, searching for him.

  ‘Mom,’ I say again.

  At last, she looks at me.

  I put the suit and hat box down on one of the chairs.

  ‘He’s not going to make it, Mom.’

  Mom’s face folds.

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying, Ariadne.’

  ‘I said Blake’s not coming. There was a mix up.’ I choke on my words. ‘With the plane.’

  All the colour drains out of her face. ‘A mix up?’

  I nod and try to sound casual. ‘You know Blake.’

  Mom pulls her hands out of mine, grabs her throat and kind of chokes.

  ‘But he was in the car with you. You picked him up.’

  ‘I didn’t— He wasn’t—’

  ‘You’re not making any sense, Ariadne.’

  ‘It’s fine, Mom, it’s all fine.’ I force the words out. Because, for a few more hours, it has to be fine. ‘Blake’s not here but it’s going to be okay.’

  ‘It’s okay?’ Mom throws her hands up in the air. ‘This is your sister’s wedding, Ariadne. Couldn’t he have made sure he got it right just this once? Was it that complicated? All he had to do was to show up and sing a song.’ She pauses. ‘And all you had to do was to make sure that happened.’

  I let out a cry. ‘I tried Mom, I really tried!’

  ‘You didn’t try hard enough!’ She puts her hand to her throat, as though she’s struggling to breathe. ‘You’re the one who doesn’t let me down, Ariadne. And you know how important this day is for all of us. What on earth happened?’

  I let her get it out of her system. And I let her take it out on me. She needs this right now.

  ‘I don’t know, Mom. I’m sorry.’

  Mom sweeps her palms down the front of her dress, flattening wrinkles that aren’t there. It’s what she does to calm herself down when she’s wound up: she tries to put order back into the world around her. Smoothing wrinkles. Tidying. Clipping dead heads off her roses.

  ‘So, where is he?’ she says, her voice strained.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

  ‘He’s on his way.’

  ‘On his way?’

  ‘He’ll show up – sometime.’

  ‘Sometime?’

  It’s stressing me out, how Mom’s repeating everything I’m saying. But it’s not really the right time to tell her she’s being annoying.

  I look around again. ‘All this is beautiful, Mom.’

  Seeing all this, what she and Jude have created, how special it is, how much it all means to everyone, has convinced me of this more than ever: I have to keep it together. My family needs this one good thing, this one moment in our lives when things feel perfect.

  Mom looks kind of paralysed, like she’s been trying really hard to make it all work but, with this last bit of information, about Blake not coming, she doesn’t know what to do anymore.

  I squeeze her arm. ‘Let’s get started, Mom, like you said.’ I look over at Stephen and Josh and Rev Drew and all the guests. ‘It’s going to be amazing.’

  ‘But what about the song?’ She’s welling up now.

  ‘I’ve got a plan, Mom.’

  ‘You’ve got a plan – what plan?’

  ‘Trust me, please.’

  She looks at me for a moment. And then nods.

  I don’t know why she should believe me or what she thinks I can possibly do to work out a song that Blake’s meant to sing when he isn’t here, but something makes her nod and then she kisses my forehead, straightens her spine and goes back into Mom mode.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here, Ariadne.’

  I nod. ‘Me too.’

  Then something catches the periphery of my vision.

  It’s a baby grand piano, in a corner of the roof terrace, not far from the mic Mom set up for Blake.

  ‘You had a piano brought in?’ I ask.

  Mom shakes her head. ‘No, it just showed up.’

  ‘What do you mean, it just showed up?’

  ‘A couple of Blake’s friends from downtown had it delivered. I asked them what it was about – I told them it wouldn’t fit – there were no plans for a piano. I had to take a table out. But they insisted.’

  Blake’s surprise, I think. But it doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t even play the piano. Maybe he hired someone to accompany him. But that’s not his style.

  ‘They dropped something else off too,’ Mom says, looking over at the stool where Blake was meant to sing the song. I notice a big white envelope. There’s one sitting on the piano too.

  ‘Did you recognise the friends – the ones who brought the stuff up?’

  ‘No. I guess I might have met them sometime but you know what Blake’s like.’

  Yeah, I know what Blake’s like: it’s impossible to keep track of all the people Blake calls friends. He has friends everywhere. Hundreds of them. Real. Virtual. And everything in between. It could have been anyone.

  ‘They said Blake was meant to have the things delivered himself – the piano and those envelopes, two days ago, but that he never showed up.’

  So Blake thought he’d be here two days ago? That means he knew he was meant to fly into Nashville.

  I tug at the collar of my dress.

  ‘Ariadne?’ Mom asks. ‘You look pale.’

  I breathe in and out slowly.

  ‘I’m fine, Mom. Just tired. What’s in the envelopes?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You haven�
�t looked?’

  Her eyes well up. ‘I thought your brother wouldn’t like it. I didn’t want to interfere.’

  Mom’s annoying in a million and one different ways but she’s always been really good at respecting our privacy.

  ‘Well, I’m going to have a look,’ I blurt out. Because stuff Blake’s privacy and stuff his Big Surprise. He doesn’t get the right to secrecy, not anymore.

  Before Mom can stop me, I go over and pick up the envelope on the stool next to the mic. It has Blake Shaw scrawled across the front. In the corner of the envelope, there’s a stamp from the music store Blake loves in downtown Nashville. The one over by the piano has the same stamp but this one has Jude’s name on it.

  My mind races.

  I look back down at the envelopes. Then I rip open the one with Blake’s name and pull out a small booklet. It’s a manuscript. A proper, printed, copyrighted manuscript. Music. And words. For someone to sing. A guitar to accompany. My eyes are burning. I blink and look closer.

  As Far as the Stars.

  That’s the title, typed across the front.

  My eyes well up. I swallow hard to stop myself from crying and keep reading.

  Under the title, there’s a dedication:

  For Jude. Written by Blake, inspired by Air.

  This is his song. His gift to Jude. And it’s meant to be from both of us – our wedding gift to her. And he’s had the manuscript professionally bound. He was going to give it to her, probably after he’d sung the song.

  I feel like my insides are being wrenched out of my body. Like I’m coming apart from the inside out.

  Why aren’t you here, Blake?

  I look back at the song.

  The tune is the same – I know enough about music to recognise that much – but the lyrics are totally different. The words aren’t the cheesy words we’d rehearsed together. They are the kind of words I recognise from Blake’s other songs: beautiful and surprising and completely his own. Not a cliché in sight.

  As I scan the lyrics, I realise that Blake had listened when I talked to him about the stars. Really listened. He understood all the stuff that I was so excited about and he’d turned it into this amazing metaphor for Jude and her love for Stephen and what they meant to each other.

  I gave him the science and he turned it into a song for Jude.

  And that cheesy song we sang – that was Blake taking me for a ride. Because he wanted this to be a surprise. For all of us. And it’s awesome. Totally awesome. But I haven’t practiced this song.

  I look back at the sky.

  Whatever you’re playing at, cut it out, Blake. We’re going to get this wedding started and you’re going to come and sing this song. You’re going to show up, damn it, like you said you would.

  I put down the manuscript and tuck Jude’s envelope under my arm. Whatever’s inside, I feel like she should have it.

  ‘You opened the envelope?’ Mom asks.

  ‘One of them.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s the latest version.’

  ‘Of the song?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘At least he’s been organized about that,’ Mom says.

  ‘Yeah, at least that.’ I look around. ‘Where are Dad and Jude?’

  ‘In the suite – just below us. They’ve been waiting for you. The other bridesmaids are there too.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll go and find her.’

  Mom nods, biting her lip.

  ‘It’s amazing, Mom. All of it.’

  She nods again.

  I take her hand. ‘You’re amazing.’

  She stares at me and for the first time in my life I see the Mom who lives behind the confident, plan and organize and make everything perfect and win every case Mom. The real Mom. The Mom who’s scared, like the rest of us.

  I lean forward and kiss her cheek.

  ‘Go, go speak to Rev Drew,’ I say. ‘We should get this wedding started.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She sucks in her breath and nods. I can tell that she’s willing herself to be strong.

  As she walks over to Rev Drew, I stay standing there for a beat, trying to find the courage to move on to the next thing I have to do: face Jude.

  You want to get into a rocket and fly off into space? Christopher’s words come back to me. Being brave is part of your DNA. You can do this.

  I can do this, I say to myself, over and over. I can do this.

  Though I know something Christopher doesn’t: that getting into a rocket and flying off into space is a piece of cake compared to facing your own family.

  I knock on the door.

  It flies open. Jude’s face is in mine: big and angry and stunningly beautiful.

  ‘Where’s Blake?’ she says, looking past me.

  ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘Not here?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I’m going to kill him!’ she says. ‘I’m going to kill you.’

  I’m glad that Jude’s back to her usual self – that she’s pulled herself together since our phone call: if she has the energy to be mad at me, it means she’s back on track. It means she can get through today.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘You don’t come to my rehearsal dinner and then you show up late to the wedding and now Blake’s not even here?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was your only job, Air. To get Blake to my wedding.’

  ‘I know.’

  Then she pauses and looks me up and down. Her gaze stops on the tear at the hem. ‘What happened to the dress?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. Because I don’t know what else to say.

  And I am – really sorry. About being late. About the dress. About all the other thousand and one ways I’ve failed my sister.

  ‘You said not yet,’ Jude says. ‘You said Blake isn’t here yet. What does that mean?’

  She never misses a thing.

  ‘He might still show up,’ I say.

  ‘Might?’

  ‘He promised he’d be here. He wouldn’t let you down, Jude. Not intentionally.’

  And then it hits me. People don’t make promises – not the kind Blake made, not the no-matter-what type of promises – unless they think there’s a chance they might not be able to keep them.

  I wish Blake never made the stupid promise. I wish he’d just made the kind of throwaway comment he usually does: Sure, I’ll be there… Something casual. But he promised.

  ‘Here, this is for you.’ I hand Jude the envelope with her name on it.

  ‘What’s this?’

  I guess she hasn’t been upstairs since Blake’s friends popped by.

  ‘It’s from Blake. One of his friends dropped it off.’

  ‘He’s left me a letter?’ she says.

  ‘I don’t know what it is, Jude. I just thought you should have it.’

  Jude takes the envelope and goes to sit in one of the satin-lined chairs by a dressing table.

  ‘Hey – there you are!’ Dad comes bounding up to me and gives me a bear hug. ‘Thank God you’re here, Ariadne,’ he whispers.

  ‘Yeah, I’m here.’ I hug him back.

  It feels good, to have one person who’s not laying into me.

  ‘I’ve missed you, Dad,’ I whisper, close to his ear.

  He hugs me a little tighter. ‘Missed you too.’

  And we both know it’s a weird thing to say – we saw each other a week ago in DC. But when stuff like this happens, a week can feel like a lifetime. And Dad and I have always relied on each other to get through the hard stuff.

  Dad’s a go-with-the-flow, make-the-best-of-it-whatever-happens kind of a guy, which makes me happy and drives Mom and Jude crazy because they’re big-time planners. But his laid-backness only goes so far: when things go wrong and Mom or Jude flip out and Dad can’t fix it, he worries. And nine times out of ten, he comes to me for advice. We’re good allies, me and Dad.

  Except I haven’t been here to help him. And
he’s probably been through hell in the past forty-eight hours. And yet he’s calm. Really calm, like he’s worked out that this time, he can’t go and lock himself in his study and hide behind his books on Greek mythology.

  Out of the corner of my eye I see Jude opening the envelope. She pulls out a booklet that looks identical to the one in the envelope with Blake’s name on it, the one I opened and left on his stool by the mic. Her mouth drops open and then she shakes her head. I want to go over to her but then Dad, letting me out of his bear hug, says, ‘I take it that now you’re here, we can get started? If we don’t get started soon there’s no telling what your mother’s going to do. She’s being remarkably calm, but—’

  ‘She’s about to flip?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have put it in those words, but yes, Ariadne, she’s close to the edge.’

  Dad doesn’t even mention Blake. I guess he’s decided to go with him not being here.

  I think of Mom talking to Rev Drew upstairs. And then this cello music that Jude picked out for her and Dad, and me and the other bridesmaids to walk down the aisle to, starts playing.

  I look over at Jude. She’s got an Audrey Hepburn kind of dress: a high, boat-necked collar, sleeveless, long gloves.

  I don’t like dresses – not on me, not on other people. But Jude’s wedding dress is different: it’s like it’s an extension of her; like it’s part of her skin.

  She looks terrified. And beautiful. My beautiful, terrified big sister.

  I go up to her and take both of her hands and kiss each palm.

  ‘It’s going to be perfect, Jude. Just perfect.’

  Her six best friends, all bridesmaids, start gathering around her. She asked me to be Maid of Honour, which is a joke considering that any one of her friends looks ten million times more the part than I do. But I guess that being her sister counts for something. So, I hold my head up high and tell myself, again, that I can do this.

  Jude goes over to a friend who did her make-up and hands her the white envelope and whispers something to her.

  Then, she comes back to us.

  ‘Ready?’ Dad asks her.

  She gives him a nod.

  And then we climb the stairs. The six girls with their perfectly styled hair and their perfect make-up and their non-ripped-dresses follow me. Behind us, Dad, his arm tucked under Jude’s.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  13.10 CDT