“Oh hell no.” Heaven’s eyes widened. “Don’t fear, tiny baby,” she said grimly. “Aunt Heaven is on the case.”
If Pamela got wind of this—as I knew she would, since it was on camera—I wasn’t sure there was any way we could keep it from getting out before the wedding. But Aunt Dylan and Aunt Heaven were sure going to try their damn best. I’d seen Dusty fake-cry a lot, but I’d never seen her cry like that. And maybe we didn’t always get along very well, but at the end of the day, she was my sister. And this baby was going to be family, just like Dusty.
And I would do whatever I could to protect them.
The chapel at Dunyvaig was its own building, detached from the castle but nearby on the grounds. The walls were stone, and the ceiling high and arched. It looked exactly like King Arthur could have married Guinevere in here. Dusty, Ronan, and the priest stood in the circular apse at the front, bathed in the light of three tall windows with points on top—castle windows, I’d always thought of them as. I wondered if they had a real name. Jamie would know. He was probably some kind of medieval architecture genius.
The last of the late-afternoon sun fell across the pew in a burst of color. Filtered through the stained glass window at my side, it looked like a small rainbow arcing through the church. I smiled, squinting at the glass angels, not really sure why they were wrestling a bunch of naked babies, but enjoying the color nonetheless.
“Yo, is that priest old enough to, uh, priest?” Heaven asked. “He looks like a rejected Weasley.”
Come to think of it, the priest did look rather young. I’d been distracted at first by the enormous red beard, bright as a new penny, that obscured most of his face. But the bits I could see looked surprisingly youthful.
“He went to school with Kit and Ronan,” Jamie explained. “They were in the same year at Eton, played rugby together for ages. That was before he became Father Mackenzie, of course.”
“I was expecting a tiny old guy, like from The Little Mermaid,” Heaven said. “Are we getting started soon? I need to find the loo,” she said exaggeratedly.
“Loo’s up front, just past the vestry,” Jamie directed her.
Heaven sidled out of the pew and scampered up the aisle, careful not to disturb Dusty and Ronan in the front.
“Is snogging in the vestry the type of activity that condemns one to the fiery pit, you think?” Jamie whispered once she’d gone.
“Obviously. Didn’t you read Dante’s Inferno? There’s a whole circle reserved for vestry snoggers.”
Jamie snorted and hastily covered it up with a cough. Kit whipped his head back to look at us suspiciously, then returned to whatever it was he was reading so intently. I had a feeling it wasn’t a hymnal.
Jamie’s fingers inched closer to where my hand rested on the bench, and the knuckles of his pinky bumped mine. Slowly, our fingers laced together. I shifted closer, pressing the length of my thigh against his. Not in a we’re-about-to-snog-in-the-vestry way, just enjoying the feel of him—so warm and solid and real. And here.
“I can’t believe the wedding is tomorrow,” Jamie murmured.
“Me neither,” I said fervently. We were in the church, doing the rehearsal, and I still couldn’t quite wrap my brain around it—or the fact that I’d be on a plane back to Tupelo first thing Monday morning.
“Don’t go,” he said suddenly. “I know you’re going. Obviously. I’m not insane. And you mustn’t say anything back. I simply had to say it out loud, at least once. As if I’d chased you to the airport in the final scene of a film.”
“I—”
“You mustn’t say anything back, Dylan, remember?” he shushed me.
I sat there quietly, holding his hand. I had a feeling that when I got back to Tupelo, none of this would seem real. I would miss Jamie a lot, but with the same ache of sadness that I’d felt when I’d never gotten my Hogwarts letter. That peculiar grief that comes from missing something that you knew you couldn’t have. The end was approaching, and its inexorable pull was palpable.
“Groomsmen up at the front, if ye please!” Father Mackenzie called out. “Ladies, ye can take your places toward the back and get ready to walk.”
“That’s my cue, then.” Jamie squeezed my hand one last time and stood. I pulled up my knees and let him sidle past me, not ready to get up quite yet. When Jamie was halfway down the aisle, Kit sprang up out of his seat and slung an arm around Jamie’s neck, maneuvering him into a headlock and dragging him up to the front like he was wrestling his little brother. One admonishing look from Father Mackenzie, however, and Jamie was released. I grinned as he attempted to pat his disheveled hair back into place.
“Oh, wow, Dilly.” I hadn’t noticed Dusty standing at the end of my pew, watching me. “You really fell hard, didn’t you?”
“Shut up,” I said genially as I slid to the end of the pew.
“You really like him,” she marveled.
I chose to ignore her.
“What are you gonna do?” She kept chattering at me as I walked up the aisle to the back of the church. “Long distance? No, that’s crazy, you’re so young. Are you ever gonna see him again? How could you, though? Oh hell. Hmm…I bet if you told Pamela about it, TRC would buy you a buncha plane tickets so they could film you dating long distance.”
“No!” I exclaimed, appalled. Quickly, I glanced around. There were of course camera crews there, but hopefully none of them thought this was an important enough idea to mention to Pamela. They looked pretty bored. Over my dead body would TRC produce a long-distance-dating special about Jamie and me. I’d rather never talk to him again.
“Don’t you have more important things to worry about than my dating life?” I asked meaningfully.
“I do not,” Dusty said crisply, glancing at the cameras. “So far there have been no unexpected developments with the…wedding plans.”
So Pamela was just sitting on the baby bomb, then. On the one hand, I was glad Ronan’s mom didn’t know yet, but on the other hand, the idea that Pamela could detonate this at any minute was extremely unsettling. I hoped she was invested enough in this fairy-tale wedding to not derail the actual ceremony with an extremely dramatic objection.
“What’d I miss?” Heaven appeared in the back of the church, returned from the loo.
“Dylan’s in love, and it is not gonna end well.” Dusty shook her head.
“Dusty, stop!” I said in the most vicious low voice I could muster up.
“Didn’t miss anything, then.” Heaven sighed.
“This is your wedding, right?” I asked shrilly. “Can we just focus on that?”
“All right, Juliet, we can deal with you later.” Dusty shrugged. A casual observer would never know she was trying to hide a secret baby from her future mother-in-law. How was she so calm? So normal? Dusty must have been a master of compartmentalization. “Mama, where are the practice bouquets?”
Why we needed to practice holding a bouquet was beyond me. But Mom produced a cardboard box of wildflower nosegays tied with tartan ribbons and handed one to each of us.
“So, uh, when does Anne Marie’s flight get in?” Heaven asked, twirling her bouquet.
“Five a.m. tomorrow. You’ll have plenty of time to get her up to speed.”
Heaven went down the aisle first; then I followed, Dusty scolding me the entire way down for walking too fast. As Father Mackenzie maneuvered me into position, Jamie leaned his head out of line to wink at me from behind Ronan and Kit. Kit made exaggerated kissy faces, then stopped suddenly with an unpleasant “Oof!” of distress. Unless I was very much mistaken, Jamie had just elbowed him unceremoniously in the kidneys.
“And here is where the bride’s da will walk her down the aisle,” Father Mackenzie said grandly, gesturing to Dusty.
I snorted and rolled my eyes, waiting for Dusty to correct him. But instead of saying anything, she stood stock-still at the back of the nave, mouth opening and closing like a fish.
“I’m verra sorry.” Father Mackenzie f
rowned, clearly unable to read the room. “Did I say aught amiss?”
I waited for Dusty to speak up. Mom was going to walk her down the aisle. She had to. I glanced over at Mom perched on the edge of a pew. She stared studiously down at her hands folded in her lap. Cash sprang up out of his seat and jogged down the aisle like he was on his way to accept an award.
“You got it, Padre!” He shot Father Mackenzie a thumbs-up. “Right back here, yeah?”
“Hold this.” I smacked my rehearsal bouquet into Heaven.
“Dylan,” Heaven warned, “I’m not sure you want to get involved in this.”
“I’m already involved. This is my family.”
I marched down the aisle with absolutely no idea what I was going to say, only the absolute conviction that I had to get down there. Hopefully, I’d figure out what to do when I got there. And hopefully the thing I decided to do wouldn’t be to murder my sister, because that was the only satisfactory action I could think of at the moment. I completely ignored Cash and faced Dusty, watching her blue eyes widen in surprise then narrow into slits when she caught the look on my face.
“What. Are. You. Doing?” I hissed.
“Rehearsing my damn wedding,” Dusty hissed back. “Which is what you’re supposed to be doing right now, in case you forgot. You get lost?”
She grabbed my arm and yanked me into the corner. I was surprised nothing was dislocated in the process.
“Be right back, Daddy!” Dusty trilled.
“He is not your daddy,” I whispered furiously. “He doesn’t deserve that name. He’s your biological father. That’s it.”
Heaven’s dad had this painted wooden sign that said ANYONE CAN BE A FATHER, BUT IT TAKES SOMEONE SPECIAL TO BE A DADDY hung up over his computer. I was tempted to get one for Cash Keller. And break it over his head.
“You don’t understand, Dylan. You have no memories of him. He was…he was fun,” she said, deciding on the word, “when he was around.”
“Yeah. Exactly. When he was around.”
“One time,” she said in a weird, dreamy voice, “he came and got me out of school. I thought something bad had happened to Meemaw when they called me into the principal’s office, but Daddy just said there was an emergency. And the emergency was that we desperately needed to go to the zoo.” She grinned. “We went to the zoo and saw all the animals, and I ate so much ice cream I barfed in a trash can.”
“That was really responsible of him,” I said snidely. “You’re lucky you’re not diabetic.”
“Honestly, Dylan. Give him a chance. He showed up, didn’t he?”
“Yeah, he showed up. Sixteen years too late.” I heard her, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying.
“He’s still part of who I am,” she insisted. “That makes him part of today.”
“Well, he shouldn’t be. Mom is—”
Mom was gone. The pew she’d been sitting in was empty. She must have slipped out another door—maybe there was one at the front of the chapel, behind the altar.
“Gone, apparently,” I finished. “Is that what you wanted? I hope you’re happy.”
“Of course that’s not what I wanted, I—Oh, hell.”
“You know what? I think I’m done rehearsing for today. Walk after Anne Marie. Stand next to Anne Marie. I think I’ve got it.”
“Don’t be a baby, Dilly—”
“I’m not being a baby,” I said, remarkably calm, given the circumstances. “I’m going to find Mom.”
I walked past Cash Keller like he didn’t exist. The blast of cold air when I opened the door hit me like a slap in the face. I breathed deeply, shut the door behind the cameraman who’d followed me, and crunched my way through the frozen snow back to Dunyvaig.
“Did you get assigned to me, or something?” I asked Cameraman Mike as he crunched beside me. Obviously, he chose not to respond. “I’m sorry. What did you do, draw the short straw?”
He said nothing, like a ghost in a gray hoodie and puffy vest.
Where would Mom go if she was upset? To wherever there was coffee. So I headed straight for the Dunyvaig kitchens, the only place I could think of that would have coffee at the ready.
I spotted her immediately, sitting alone at a long table, blond bob bowed over hands wrapped around a coffee mug. She looked up at the sound of footfalls on the stairs.
“Dylan!” Mom exclaimed, clearly surprised. “What are you doing here?”
“Dusty’s being a butthead.” I pulled out the stool next to her and sat down, plunking my elbows on the table. Cameraman Mike settled in to the side, giving us more space than I would have thought. Huh. A surprising gesture of humanity.
Mom chuckled into her coffee.
“You shouldn’t fight with your sister. Especially not on her big day.”
“It’s not her big day. Not yet. And I can fight with her if she’s being a butthead,” I said grumpily. “Aren’t you mad?”
“I’m not mad, Dyl,” she said simply. “It’s her wedding. She has every right to do what she wants.”
“But what she wants is wrong,” I insisted. “How can she be so nice to Cash? How could she let him be part of the wedding? How can she even stand to talk to him? How…I just…I just don’t understand her.”
I fell quiet, watching Mom’s knuckles as they flexed around the chipped blue mug.
“You girls are so different,” she said meditatively, breaking the silence.
“Yeah, I know.” I rolled my eyes. “I’ve heard that often enough.”
“You are,” she insisted. “Dusty, she’s a little like me. And a lot like your daddy, bless her heart. She needs people. Needs ’em to like her. But you—”
“I’m a cave-dwelling troll who needs no one?” I supplied.
“You are nothing like a troll,” she scolded. “And you know I hate it when you put yourself down like that, so stop.” I avoided eye contact, but I could feel her gaze boring into me. Somehow, I always remembered all the times Mom made disparaging remarks about my outfits, but I never remembered all the times she wouldn’t let me say mean things about myself. “You like doing things your own way. Going your own way. Being alone doesn’t scare you.”
“That’s just because most people are really annoying.”
“That’s exactly what I mean!” Mom laughed. “Most of us care way too much about what the annoying people think. But not you, tough cookie.”
“Then why is being around the cameras so hard for me?” I asked in a small voice.
“I think it’s hard for everyone.” Mom squeezed my hand. “The rest of us are just better at faking it.”
“But you work with cameras every day.”
“I sure do. In a studio, where everything is controlled, where I’ve got a team of people working hard to make me look my best, where I get to clock out at the end of the day, wipe off my makeup, and pull on those sweatpants with the holes in them.”
I laughed. I’d forgotten about Mom’s one really, truly disgusting item of clothing—a pair of Ole Miss sweatpants she reserved for relaxing in only after really long shoots. Maybe we weren’t quite as different as I’d always thought.
“It’s weird, being filmed all the time,” she whispered, punctuating it with an exaggerated wink at Cameraman Mike. “Trust me. I’m trying my best to make it look normal, but it sure doesn’t feel normal.”
“No kidding.”
“But you can handle it. You’re strong, Dylan.”
“I don’t know about that,” I muttered, embarrassed.
“I do,” she said simply. “Which is why I know you’ll make your own choice about Cash. Because you know your own mind. You always have. And that’s all that matters. What you do. Not what does Dusty does.”
“He’s not my family.” Finally, I felt like I’d figured out how I felt. “He may be my father, but he’s not my family. You’re my family, Mom. You, and me, and Dusty. Even if she is a butthead.”
“Unfortunately, being a butthead may be hereditary,” sh
e said ruefully. “That’s not all Dusty’s fault.”
“Are you okay, Mom?” I asked. “Because of the, uh, supreme butthead’s reappearance? It’s gotta be weird.”
“Weird doesn’t even begin to describe it,” she said wryly. “If it were up to me, quite frankly, I’d rather not have seen him again. Ever. And to have him come back for this, when it seems so obvious he just wanted to be part of the show—”
“Yes! Thank you!” I cut her off, too eager to have someone agree with me. “I hate that he showed up now. It’s so…so…”
“It’s tacky,” Mom said distastefully. “Tacky” was the word of judgment Mom reserved for behavior she considered the lowest of the low. “But it seems to mean something to Dusty that he’s here. So I suppose I’m glad he’s here, then.”
“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” I said. Just because I thought it was awful and gross and, you know, tacky that he was here didn’t mean that Dusty wasn’t getting something real out of it. I knew I’d never be able to understand it. But at the very least I could try to be happy for Dusty.
“I just hope he doesn’t ruin this for her, somehow. He’s got a real knack for screwing up the big moments.” She smiled sadly at me. “Good thing he was outta the picture before he could forget any of your birthday parties.”
“I’m glad he was out of the picture, too.” I reached out and took her hand, somehow too self-conscious to say all the things I wanted to. Like how amazing Mom had done without him. How lucky I felt to have been raised by her. I just held her hand and hoped she could feel how much I loved her.
“Everything’s fine, Dyl. I promise. Just have fun at the wedding tomorrow, okay? I plan on having a damn good time, no matter what Cash Keller chooses to do. And it’s gonna be one hell of a party. You know there’s gonna be cake. So enjoy it.”
“Okay.” I grinned back. “I love you, Mom.”
“Love you, too, sweet girl.”
She took a piece of hair that had fallen across my face and tucked it behind my ear, like she had a thousand times since I was little. She pulled me into a hug, and we sat together, in the warmth of the kitchens, safe from the cold outside.
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