Nearlyweds

by Beth Kendrick

  “But…” She blinked back what appeared to be tears. Give me a break. “But I did. Maybe somebody else will see him and—”

  “You take him back to the pound, he dies,” I said bluntly. “And it’ll be your fault. Simple as that. He’s a big, black, male dog. Three strikes against him. This time of year, people are looking for fuzzy little puppies to stick under the Christmas tree. They want ten-pound yorkie mixes that won’t shed too much or eat them out of house and home. Not a shaggy, untrained oaf who’ll knock over their toddlers.”

  Tears spilled down onto her cheeks. She was one of those freaks of nature who managed to look beautiful even while crying. No red, puffy eyes. No runny nose.

  “I don’t have a toddler,” she whispered, all tortured.

  “Well, then, you’re perfect for this dog,” I snapped.

  “I’ll never have a toddler.”

  “Great. You’ll have plenty of time to take him to obedience classes.”

  Her slender body shook as her crying intensified, and just when I was about to weaken my resolve to hate her and offer the poor kid another paper towel, the cowbell on the door jingled again.

  “Casey Nestor, tell me you’re not making your customers cry again.”

  I waved as Erin Maye, the new pediatrician in Dr. Lowell’s office, strolled past the chew toy display, still wearing her white doctor’s coat under her puffy green parka.

  “What was this poor girl’s crime?” Erin lifted an eyebrow toward the quivering waif surrounded by kibble. “Did she feed her dog the wrong kind of food? Forget to add daily digestive enzymes?”

  “She’s dumping her dog at the pound. And it’s Casey Keating now,” I corrected. Like Stella, Erin was a recent transplant from the big city (Boston), but unlike Stella, she was no-frills and down-to-earth.

  “This dog?” Erin held out her hand for the Great Dane to sniff, which proved to be an unnecessary formality—the dog tackled her like a linebacker and licked her ear.

  “I am not dumping him at the pound!” Stella insisted, her blue eyes flashing.

  I just rolled my eyes at Erin and mouthed the words “drama queen.”

  “Erin, this is Stella Porter.”

  “Oh really?” Erin eyed Stella with renewed interest. “I know your husband—I’ve seen him around the hospital.”

  “Erin’s a doctor,” I explained.

  Stella crossed her arms. “Why are you guys looking at me like that?”

  “Like what?” I scoffed.

  “No one’s looking at you.” Erin dismissed her with a wave of her hand and reached into her leather briefcase. “Did you get a letter last week?”

  “A letter? What kind of—” I broke off, staring at the book resting on top of Erin’s files. “What is that?”

  “I know.” She smiled grimly.

  I reread the book’s title. “Embracing Tradition: The Wife Within?”

  “An early Christmas gift from Renée. It was waiting on our kitchen table, all gift-wrapped, when I got back from my medical conference in Philadelphia last week.”

  My eyes widened. “You gave Renée a key to your house?”

  “Of course I didn’t. But mere locks cannot keep her from her sainted son.”

  “Who’s Renée?” Stella peered over my shoulder at the book while the dog gave it a cursory sniff.

  Erin rubbed her temples. “My mother-in-law. Anyway, Casey, did you happen to get any interesting mail last week?”

  I shrugged. “Just the usual—wedding bills, vet bills, and heating bills. Why?”

  “Because David and I got a letter from the county clerk—we aren’t legally married. Pastor Rick died before he signed and filed our marriage certificates. Can you believe that?”

  “What?” I frowned. “How did that happen?”

  “I have no idea, but his wife found a stack of unsigned documents on his desk last week when she cleaned out his office.”

  “Well, can’t you just send it in without him?” I asked.

  “No; I need his signature to make it legal, and since he’s dead, I won’t be getting that any time soon.”

  I swallowed hard. “But Nick and I—”

  “I know.” Erin nodded. “He presided over three weddings that weekend: me and David, you and Nick, and one other couple. And apparently, we’re all still technically single.”

  “But we signed the marriage certificate!” I exclaimed. “And what about our witnesses? We have a whole churchful of people to back us up!”

  Erin shrugged. “Yeah, well, the State of Massachusetts doesn’t want to hear it. We have to go down to the courthouse and do the whole thing over.”

  “But…” I paused. “I didn’t get a letter.”

  “Then you might want to give the county clerk a call.”

  “So Nick and I, we might not really be married? After all that?” After he almost stood me up at the altar?

  “Hey, maybe the four of us can go to city hall together.” Erin smiled. “Have a double wedding.” She waited a few seconds for me to react. “What?”

  “Nothing.” I struggled to maintain a poker face. “I’m just shocked, you know?”

  “Tell me about it.” Her wry, world-weary doctor routine kicked into overdrive. “You drop tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding, you’d think you could trust the officiant to do his job correctly. I mean, what is this, amateur hour?”

  I nodded dumbly, barely registering a word she said.

  “You’d think someone at the church would’ve caught this earlier, but no.” Erin was really getting fired up now. “I say we explore our legal options. We deserve compensation for our pain and suffering. David’s cousin is an attorney in Lexington; I’ll give her a call and ask if we have a case. A trio of brokenhearted brides; what jury’s gonna say no to that?” She finally stopped to catch her breath. “But it’ll be more sympathetic if all three of us band together. Do you know who the other bride was?”

  Stella’s voice quavered behind us. “Me.”

  7

  ERIN

  I still can’t believe this.” David reread the letter informing us that our newly minted marriage was a fraud, then glanced over at me with excitement. “Do you realize what this means?”

  “I should’ve put all that money toward my med school loans instead of buying the froufrou wedding dress?” I tipped back my kitchen chair and grabbed a spoon out of the drawer next to the dishwasher.

  “It means we have a chance to do it all over again!” My new husband (well, almost husband, according to the State of Massachusetts) looked thrilled about this prospect. He was definitely more optimistic and spontaneous than I (a good thing, considering that I was such a perfectionist control freak that my father joked they had to invent a new personality profile for me—type A plus), but the wedding hoopla had been as stressful for him as it had been for me. Maybe more so—after all, Renée was his mother.

  “Honey.” I stirred my yogurt. “How could you want to do all that again? Do you not remember the migraines we got over the great fondant-versus-buttercream controversy?”

  “No, no, I mean let’s do it right this time. The way we wanted to do it. We can go to Hawaii, just the two of us, and get hitched in our bathing suits on the beach. No hysterical bridesmaids, no stuffy country club, and best of all, no Mom.”

  “But we just took our honeymoon in September!” I protested. “I can’t take another week off.”

  “Sure you can. What’s Dr. Lowell going to do? Fire you?”

  “He might, actually.”

  “Are you kidding? He loves having your Harvard Med diploma up on his office wall. Makes him feel smart by association. If he fires you, he won’t be able to go around namedropping his new partner’s Ivy League pedigree. I say we pack our bags and go. Two honeymoons in four months—let the good times roll.”

  I closed my eyes and conjured up a vision of pristine white beaches, golden sunlight, and lush green foliage. David and I, holding hands, repeating our vows as the surf crashed ove
r the—

  Back to reality, Dr. Maye. “I’d love to, David, but we can’t. I have so many new patients, and flu season started early this year—”

  He dropped to one knee in the middle of the scuffed linoleum floor. “Erin, will you marry me?”

  “Already did.” I wriggled the fingers of my left hand at him.

  He threw out his arms as if about to burst into song. “Okay, then, will you marry me again?”

  The man didn’t have a pragmatic bone in his body.

  No wonder I loved him so much.

  He clapped one hand to his heart. “I’m not getting up till you say yes. Every time you try to make coffee or open the fridge, here I’ll be, right underfoot, getting gigantic bruises on my knees. So you might as well save us both the suspense and contusions and say yes now.”

  I sat down on the floor next to him and kissed him. “Yes.”

  “Yes?” He looked as elated as he had the first time I’d accepted his proposal. “You’ll run away with me and commit all manner of lewd, lascivious acts on the beach?”

  “I will. But you better bring enough cash to make bail when we get arrested for public indecency.”

  “Done.”

  I kissed him again. “I’ll talk to Dr. Lowell tomorrow; if he’ll give me the time off, we’ll go.”

  He pressed my hand between both of his. “This is gonna be great. We’ll get some time to ourselves before Mom moves in.”

  I froze midkiss. “Before what, now?”

  His smile faltered. “Before my mom moves in.”

  I snatched my hand away. “I know I didn’t hear you correctly. Because if you just said what I thought you just said, then I…then we…”

  “It’s just for a few weeks, nothing major. She’s remodeling her house and—”

  “Since when?”

  “She got depressed after the wedding—”

  “Our wedding? Why?”

  “—and called a contractor and they’re ripping out her kitchen and all the bathrooms. Pretty soon she’ll have no hot water and no place to cook.”

  “Then she can stay at a hotel,” I said flatly.

  “Erin!”

  “No, David. No. I have been more than accommodating when it comes to your mother’s…”

  He narrowed his eyes. “My mother’s what?”

  I made myself count to five. “Your mother’s whims. I agreed to have the wedding at her country club, with her pastor, right before I gave up a great job and moved to her town. I am a reasonable woman. But this is beyond the beyond.”

  His tone changed from accusatory to cajoling. “You’re right. I know. She gets a little carried away sometimes, but she’s my mother and she’s all alone…”

  There it was: the widow card. Renée’s ace in the hole, brought out every time anyone didn’t fall over themselves to cater to her every need.

  “Listen. Honey.” I paused, trying to find the most diplomatic way to word this. “I know she’s your mother and I know she’s come to rely on you since your father passed away. But we’re newlyweds. We need our space.”

  “Agreed, but—”

  I threw up a hand. “She cannot move in with us. Full stop.”

  “Okay, well maybe ‘move in’ was the wrong way to put it. She’ll just be visiting for a few weeks while—”

  “While they gut her entire house? Do you honestly think that’s going to be a nice, neat, monthlong project? It’s going to take months, David. Possibly years. What about all her bridge friends? Can’t she stay with one of them?”

  “She wants to be with family,” he said plaintively. “She doesn’t want to impose on her friends.”

  “Then she better get used to cold showers and takeout, ’cause she’s not moving in with us.”

  He looked at me like I’d grown fangs and talons. “Erin!”

  “What? David, try to see my side of this. Did I say anything when she cried at the rehearsal dinner because she was, quote, losing her only child forever?”

  “No.”

  “Did I say anything when she interrupted our first dance to ask when we were going to start trying to conceive?”

  “No.”

  “Did I say anything when she tried to kill me last Thanksgiving?”

  His face turned crimson. “Would you get over that already? It was an accident!”

  “An accident? I must have told her fifty times that I was allergic to peanuts. I tell everyone I meet. It’s practically tattooed on my forehead!”

  “She’s getting older,” he countered. “She forgets things sometimes.”

  “Yeah, whenever it’s convenient for her.”

  He shot up into a standing position. “What exactly are you saying?”

  “I’m saying she’s not moving in with us! Not now, not ever.”

  He set his jaw. “Just because you have the MD after your name doesn’t mean you get to make all the decisions.”

  This took me completely off guard. “Wait. What?”

  “Every time we argue, you pull rank, and I’m sick of it.”

  “I never said anything about—”

  “Yes, okay, we all know you’re the exalted physician who married the lowly pharmacologist! But that doesn’t mean you get to call all the shots!”

  “My being a physician has nothing to do with any of this.”

  “Then why do you always get the final say?”

  I exhaled sharply. “David, there are certain issues where a spouse deserves veto power.”

  “And let me guess—you get to decide what those issues are.”

  Something inside me snapped. “That’s right, David. I do. I gave up my apartment in Boston and all my friends and moved all the way out here so your poor, bereft mother wouldn’t have to be alone. I gave up a great job opportunity at a prestigious teaching hospital to hand out cough syrup and antibiotics.”

  His eyes had lost all trace of loving enthusiasm. “She’s my mom and she helped pay for this house. What am I supposed to do?”

  “I told you accepting that money from her was a mistake. I told you! Well, I’m only going to say this once: If she moves in, I move out.”

  He stared at me but didn’t say anything.

  “David?” I prompted.

  Still no response.

  I grabbed my purse off the kitchen table and headed for the garage.

  “Erin, don’t.”

  I whirled around, frightened by the rage breaking over me. “I mean it. It’s me or Renée. Who’s it going to be?”

  He studied the linoleum. “It’s not that simple.”

  I reached for the doorknob.

  “Please don’t.”

  I turned the dead bolt and pushed the door open.

  When he looked up, his eyes were bleak and betrayed. “You promised to marry me all over again.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe once was enough.”

  8

  STELLA

  Sweetie, did we get any important mail recently?” I banged the front door shut behind me, which seemed to spook the dog, so I leaned down and rubbed his ears to reassure him.

  Mark rushed into the foyer, looking both annoyed and relieved. “Are you ready to stop behaving like—” He broke off when he saw the dog. “What is that?”

  I tilted my head, trying to look nonchalant. “A dog.”

  He folded his arms over his green raglan sweater. “I see. And whose dog is it, exactly?”

  “He’s ours.” I tugged on the leash. The dog lumbered forward. “I bailed him out of the county shelter.”

  “You’re kidding, right? Whose dog is it, really?”

  I brushed past him into the kitchen. “Look at him, Mark. Smell him. Do you really think anyone we know would let their dog run around all matted and filthy like this?”

  He glanced at the dog, who had planted himself next to the marble-topped island and was scratching away at his neck with his back foot. “Stop yanking my chain and tell me what the hell’s going on.”

  “I’m not yanking your c
hain, darling.” I started humming as I rummaged through the cherry cabinets for hot chocolate mix and a mug. “This is our new dog. Isn’t he a cutie? I’m going to make cocoa—want some?”

  “Stella. What have you done?”

  I filled the kettle with water and placed it on the burner. “I took him over to that little pet supply shop on Fifth Street, and the owner helped me pick out food and dishes and toys and that sporty new collar. Her name’s Casey—Casey Keating, I think. Do you know her?”

  His face went ashen. “That crazy animal-rights girl who’s always passing out leaflets on the evils of animal testing in front of the hospital?”

  “I don’t know. I guess. Anyway, she knew who you were. And of course she’d heard all about me. I’m the Paris Hilton of the Berkshires, thanks to Taylor and Marissa.” I found the bag of mini-marshmallows and crammed a few into my mouth. “All the dog stuff’s in the trunk, so when you get a chance, could you bring it in? Oh, and could you put the convertible top back up, too? I had to take it down to fit him in the passenger seat. I thought we were going to die of frostbite on the ride home. What do you think we should name him?”

  “You’re serious. You actually adopted this filthy monstrosity of a dog?”

  I batted my eyelashes at him. “Don’t talk that way about our baby, sweetheart.”

  His lips crimped together. “Don’t start with that again.”

  “I’m not.” I nibbled a few more marshmallows as I sprinkled cocoa powder into the mug. “You wanted to get a dog, so we got a dog. I’m just trying to be agreeable.”

  “You’re not being agreeable; you’re being passive-aggressive. I already told you, we’re getting a maltipoo.”

  “From a breeder with a waiting list? Why should we spend a ton of money buying a designer dog when there are so many homeless animals dying in shelters every day?”

  “Oh God.” He shook his head. “The lunatic leaflet girl’s gotten her hooks into you.”