“Let’s go make sure Harper’s on board,” Lily said, and she pulled her aunt across the lawn to talk to the wedding planner, leaving Deacon standing next to Dahlia’s father. No one could expect the two of them to have anything to say to each other, so Deacon enjoyed the moment of quiet.
“You’re not going to sue, are you?”
Deacon wasn’t sure he’d heard Benson Ravenel correctly. “Sir?”
“For defamation? Or breach of contract?”
Deacon had no intention of correcting Mr. Ravenel’s legal misunderstandings. “Of course not.”
Benson nodded, breathing an audible sigh of relief. “Of course not. Of course not,” he said. “Well. Don’t be a stranger.” And he walked away, smoothing the silver sideburns that lay already perfectly smooth against his face.
Lily came back and stood again by his side. “Good?”
“This has been a weird day,” Deacon said, shaking his head. “Any chance I could sneak out the back?”
Lily seemed to be weighing the odds. “No chance at all.”
“Actually, there’s no chance I could have done this without you.” Deacon bent his head from side to side and let his neck crack. “Thank you again.”
Lily turned so she was standing directly in front of him. She was so much taller than Dahlia, it was easier to look her in the face.
“I’m not going to lie,” she said. “I wish things had gone better. But this isn’t like one of those nasty breakups where you have to divide up the dishes and the furniture and the friends.” She hugged out a breath of annoyance. “Tonight Dahlia left us both, and I’m yours.”
She seemed to realize very quickly that what she’d said might not be exactly what she’d intended. “I mean,” she said, “that I’m here for you. I’m your friend, and I’ll always be that.”
“I get it, Lil.” Deacon wrapped his arms around Lily one more time, and as he held her, he had a moment to realize that he’d hugged her more in the past hour than he had in a long time.
And that he liked it.
He definitely needed another drink.
Chapter Three
Lily swore under her breath and vowed to never, ever again agree to be a maid of honor. Not even a bridesmaid. This was dumb. And totally not worth the dress she’d never wear again. She liked the necklace, though.
She walked through the debris of the William-Aiken House, relieved at least that fixing overturned glasses and sticky chairs both inside and outside were not part of her job description.
She’d heard a few whispers that Dahlia had used her honeymoon plane ticket. Bali? Alone? It was exactly something Dahlia would do. Lily knew it was partly her fault. That year right after nursing school when she took six months to do humanitarian nursing in Indonesia, she’d called Dahlia and demanded that she make her way there—immediately, if not sooner. She’d packed a bag or three or four and flown around the world to see this paradise, and she’d decided on the spot that it was the place she’d honeymoon with Deacon someday.
Well. No honeymoon. No Deacon. But Lily hoped she’d have a great vacation.
She slid into a chair. She was too tired to be angry at Dahlia.
No, that wasn’t true. She was just tired enough to be angry at Dahlia. It wasn’t her usual reaction to Dahlia’s usual nonsense. She’d spent her whole life walking just behind, clearing away the detritus of all the “watch this, you’re going to love it” moments.
Starting with the little rebellions of their childhood, like stealing chocolate bars from the convenience store, and moving up to that hit and run on a parked car. Uncle Ben had fixed that with the authorities by explaining there were faulty lightbulbs on the street corner. Dahlia was able to deny her participation in the high school gambling ring (even though every student knew she was running the whole thing), but she didn’t get kicked out of their prestigious private school until she stole and then sold Mr. Keane’s physics test questions. Lily had denied knowledge of any of it, but she refused to go any farther. She wouldn’t agree to testify that it had been someone else. Dahlia pretended she didn’t care and kept her rebellions in the new high school to a quiet roar.
Over the past few months, all the warning signs had flashed in Lily’s face, and she had shaken it off over and over. That was her whole action plan, until it seemed way too serious. It started with Dahlia’s drinking more and at strange times of the day, then grew to lying about where she’d been and who she’d been with. Then she’d started walking out of stores with things she hadn’t bought—her own specialty of accidental shoplifting. When Lily told Deacon about her worries, he’d listened with half attention, knowing that any of those things could signal a spiral—or not.
So even though this is all my fault, Lily thought, it’s not really my fault. Just because I should have seen it coming doesn’t mean I could actually see it coming.
And now she was gone. Overseas and across the world, if an all-expense paid ticket was any indication and if the rumors were to be believed. She should feel sad. She got left too. But all Lily could feel was exhausted. And, if she were being honest, a little grateful.
She looked around to see if anyone had heard her think that. But nobody else was left. She peeled herself off the chair and walked to the parking lot, thinking the whole way that she hadn’t meant it. She didn’t want Dahlia to disappear from her life. She loved Dahlia. She had always loved Dahlia. Sometimes to a dangerously worshipful degree. But as she unlocked her car and a soft breeze ruffled her hair, she could admit, if only in her mind, that it would be a relief to go a few weeks, even a few months without worrying about cleaning up after Dahlia.
The next morning, she drove over to Camellia and Ben’s house. She decided to knock on the front door and let the housekeeper announce her instead of walking through the kitchen entry like she’d done nearly every day of her life. She was here as the maid of honor, not simply as Lily.
“Hi, darling,” Camellia said, leaning over to kiss her cheek.
“Morning, Camellia.” She didn’t ask any polite, meaningless questions that Camellia would have to lie to answer. “Ready to get started?”
Her sigh floated out. “Ready as I’m likely to be.”
They sat at the formal dining room table surrounded by wedding gifts ranging from the ordinary (at least three really nice toasters) to the practical (towels and sheet sets) to the profane (who needed so many heavy silver platters?). At Lily’s feet stood a tower of cardboard boxes, mounds of bubble wrap, and a carton full of sticky labels and permanent markers.
Lily would choose a gift, read the card, and start wrapping it for return. Aunt Camellia found the giver’s name and address on her invitation spreadsheet and hand-wrote an address label. They got into a groove, and several hours passed in which they said very little about anything other than what was related to the packaging and labeling of gifts.
When Camellia’s marker ran dry of ink, she capped it and placed it beside her and then said a curse word Lily had never heard from her before. Lily blinked in surprise.
“Sorry about that, honey. I’ve been holding that in for,” she checked her watch, “about nineteen hours now.”
Lily didn’t know whether to laugh or not. In no way was this funny, after all. Except that it had turned her aunt into a dockworker. Playing it safe, she kept wrapping. Camellia kept talking.
“Can you believe this? How could she? What was she thinking? Obviously, she wasn’t thinking at all. She took no thought for what this would do to her father. Or me. Or Deacon, that poor boy. This will change him forever, mark my words. How will he ever recover from the shock of this?”
Lily thought about letting her continue muttering complaints, but that last one was a question, after all.
“I can’t imagine Deacon was completely shocked. None of us should have been entirely surprised.” She couldn’t quite make herself look at Aunt Camellia. “I think he’ll recover.”
“Lily, I’m surprised at you.”
She fe
lt her face flush. “I don’t mean that he’s not sad. I know he is. But I don’t think it’s irreparable damage.”
Camellia did a sniffy little breath. “You misunderstand me.”
Lily looked up. Camellia was smiling.
“I’m surprised because I’ve never heard you speak with anything approaching backbone about our Dahlia. She’s pulled you along after her harebrained schemes your whole life.” Only someone with Aunt Camellia’s charm and charisma could use a phrase like “harebrained schemes” without sounding like a living, breathing cartoon character. She reached over and patted Lily’s cheek with soft hands. “Good for you.” She looked around the piles of packaged boxes. “I think we should call it a day. What do you say? Lunch? Let’s call your mom and go find something made of white bread carbs.”
“You sure you want to face the town?” Lily asked.
Camellia paused and shook her head. “We’ll have something delivered. A girl has got to eat.”
A few minutes later, Lily heard the front door open and heard her mother’s voice. “Hey,” she called.
Camellia answered, “We’re in here, Iris.” The sisters kissed the air beside each other’s faces. “I’ll call for sandwiches,” Camellia said.
When she was out of the room, Lily’s mom slid into a chair and heaved a theatrical sigh. “Oh, sweetheart. What a night. You handled all that maid of honor business like a pro.”
Lily laughed. “Thanks, but I really don’t want to go professional with the maid of honor business. In fact, I’d be thrilled to never, ever do that again.”
Iris leaned over and patted Lily’s knee. “We’ll see. Maybe now you can focus on yourself.”
“Mom. You are not going to use Dahlia’s runaway bride incident to springboard into a conversation about my fantasy wedding.”
Iris looked a little self-conscious. “Sorry. I know. It’s just that for the first time in years,” she looked over her shoulder to assure herself they were alone, “you can stop following after Dahlia and Deacon and deal with your own life.”
Lily did not roll her eyes. She behaved herself with grace and decorum, just as Iris had taught her. She smiled at her mom and said, “I will start dealing with my own life right after lunch. I promise.”
Even though the afternoon spent with both Camellia and her mom went smoothly, and was even fun, Lily found herself checking her phone every few minutes. Why hadn’t Deacon called? Or at least answered the text she’d sent when she woke up? She was glad she’d waited to text him until morning, because she could come off way more breezy and casual after a few good hours of sleep. Her message, Let me know when natural light hits you, seemed miles better than what she would have sent if she’d written something in the night.
So where was he?
Obviously, he wasn’t expecting to go into work. He’d planned two weeks off for the honeymoon. And if he’d gone into the office, he’d have seen her text and could respond that he was fine.
Which, of course he was.
Probably.
But he didn’t respond. And he hadn’t called.
She couldn’t even go break down the door, because she didn’t know where he’d gone home to. Was he at the single house just off Vanderhorst Street that Dahlia’s parents had given them as a wedding gift? She couldn’t quite see it, Deacon hiding out in the single house by himself. Lily couldn’t imagine that he’d go there to escape the specter of Dahlia. Her fingerprints were literally and figuratively all over the house.
His old apartment, then? Last she heard, extended family in for the wedding was staying at his place. Emmett’s place? A hotel? His parents’ house? None of those seemed like good options.
So what did that leave? Waiting.
She hated waiting.
She wondered if any of the groomsmen had stuck around. Maybe one of those friends had changed plans and stayed in Charleston to keep Deacon company. How hard would it be for him to tell her so?
Unless he wasn’t okay.
But he was okay.
Of course he was.
Lily didn’t have a shift at the hospital until the next morning. What, she asked herself, would she be doing this afternoon if the wedding had happened and Deacon and Dahlia were in Bali? Certainly not obsessively checking for a text that wouldn’t likely come.
Grocery shopping. That’s what she’d be doing if everything had happened like it was going to. She almost thought “like it was supposed to,” but stopped herself. Was it supposed to happen? Or did it all implode because cosmic forces were opposed to the marriage in the first place?
Wait. Did she think cosmic forces were opposed? Of course not. That was ridiculous.
Maybe.
She pulled out her phone and made a shopping list.
Or, if not cosmic forces, was Lily herself opposed to the marriage?
Huh. She grabbed a cloth bag from under the sink and walked to the market. Pulling stir-fry ingredients into her basket, she tried to forget that Deacon was ignoring her.
Deacon-and-Dahlia was a fact of Lily’s existence. They’d been together so long that sometimes Lily thought of them as one, as a unit. Their marriage would have only cemented that. And it hadn’t happened. And they were entirely Not Together now. And Lily was way more concerned with where he’d spent his day, and with whom, and whether he was fine, than she was with any question of Dahlia.
What did any of this even mean? She asked herself that question several times over the next ten minutes as she walked down grocery aisles from which she needed nothing.
Then, walking past the canned peaches, Lily had an epiphany. An honest-to-God epiphany. It stopped her still, between the pears and the mandarin oranges.
She hadn’t had a Dahlia-free thought in years.
Every day, life’s goodness or badness was measured by how Dahlia’s actions affected Lily. Her nursing job at the Medical University of South Carolina was the only thing that felt unaffected by the dramas Dahlia inspired. In every other moment of Lily’s life, Dahlia’s happiness led to Lily’s satisfaction; Dahlia’s dejection led to Lily’s unhappiness. Today’s deepest concern, outside of Deacon’s whereabouts, was that she wasn’t at all sure how she should react to a world where Dahlia was absent.
And that was wrong. Unfair.
“No.” She said the words aloud. “I am not the sidekick in Dahlia Ravenel’s life.”
She laughed and looked around to see who heard her. No one.
She picked up a box of herbal tea on the way to the checkout lane—the kind of tea that Dahlia would have called an old lady drink. Lily held the box to her heart until the cashier was ready to ring her up.
“You know what?” Lily asked the guy. “It’s a really great day.”
Chapter Four
Deacon’s relief when his phone battery died equaled his concern when his bottle ran dry.
He answered a few calls in those first twenty-four hours but didn’t remember anything he’d said. He’d felt responsible enough to tell Emmett where he was going, and he remembered that Max called to make sure he was all right. He vaguely remembered wondering exactly how right he had to be to qualify as “all right.” After a couple of calls in which he was pretty sure there was some shouting, he ignored the phone. Even on silent, he could tell every time a text came in, and there was nothing—nothing at all—that anyone had to say to him that he wanted to hear. So he did what he could do so he wouldn’t hear.
He wasn’t, in general, a big drinker. His job was too demanding, and he could see by looking in every direction the results of southern lawyers drinking. In his experience at his father’s firm, a guy worked hard until he got really good at law, at which point he allowed himself to spend afternoons in the bar when not in court, until the boozy haze killed any desire or ability to perform in court. Then he got his name on a building and retired. To the bar.
“I’m not in court this week,” he thought. “Looks like I’m behaving as expected.”
He closed his eyes and let himsel
f sink into sleep. When he woke, he’d roll over and sleep again. If the sunlight seemed too bright, he’d pull his T-shirt over his head or use a pillow to block some of it out. When he could be bothered to think about it at all, he considered the possibility of sleeping for the rest of his life.
After many sleep/wake/sleep repeats, he pulled himself out of bed. He wandered around the sparsely furnished hunting cabin wondering if there was anything to eat. The kitchen corner had a few cans of soup that expired years ago, but he hadn’t found a can opener. There were boxes of cereal, but mice had claimed them. Half a bottle of whiskey hadn’t lasted long, and the bourbon in the cupboard made him feel like a legitimate southern gentleman until he stopped feeling anything at all.
That was two days ago, and now he was starving.
Wallowing was hard work.
“What am I trying to prove?” he asked the empty cabin. That he was heartbroken? Check. He was so weighed down he couldn’t even stand up straight. That he’d become tragic? He’d caught a reflection of himself in the window. His two-day beard made his face look sunken, and the circles around his eyes could have been painted in ink.
“No wonder she left.” When this pathetic sentence left his mouth, he flopped down on the couch and determined that he’d never get up again.
Except he was really, really hungry.
Hauling himself back up off the couch, he slumped into the bathroom. Under his funk of depression and self-pity he had the thought that he was grateful his family not only kept this place, but they kept the electricity and water hooked up. He splashed cold water on his face and fished a toothbrush out of a drawer. “Don’t think too hard about it,” he told himself as he wondered who’d used the toothbrush last, and when.
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