by Karen Booth
“But it's not just that. I need to see if you and I can make this work. That's why I said I couldn't take up with you again if you weren't serious.”
“I don't know why you act as though I'm incapable of being serious. Like where does that come from?” I switched off the bathroom light and headed back to my bedroom. “I was very serious when we were in Ireland. You were my whole world then.”
“You say that, but I asked you to marry me and you laughed it off.”
“You did not.”
“That night in the pub. A few weeks before you left.”
“Are you serious right now? You did not ask me to marry you. You said marry me and then you took a drink of your beer. That was not a proposal.”
“Maybe I was trying to protect myself. Which was probably a good call, since you laughed.”
“Of course I did. We were always joking around. You never mentioned it again.”
“I was dead serious, Katherine.”
My head was swimming. Of course it was—I truly had thought he was kidding. We'd been in the middle of a crowded pub. We were both at least a little drunk. And I was twenty-one years old, nowhere close to being ready for marriage, whereas he was a year away from thirty at that point. “Shit. I’m so sorry.” I plopped down at the end of the bed and ran my hand through my hair. This was a classic example of just how far out of my depth I was with Eamon. “I had no idea you were serious.” My brain wouldn't stop churning out scenarios of how differently my life would've played out if I'd known he wasn't kidding around.
“To be fair, I should've forced the issue. I see that now. Which is why I might've been a little heavy-handed the morning we had coffee. I just didn't want there to be any ambiguity.”
“You didn't want me to laugh.”
“How would you have answered? All those years ago. If you hadn't thought it was a joke?”
“I don't even know how to answer that question. I was so young. I had my family at home.”
Painful silence hung in the air and I again flopped back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
“It was stupid of me to ask in the first place. It was probably more stupid for me to bring it up now. It was a long time ago. We can't fix the past.”
Everything he was saying was designed to let me off the hook, but the reality was that none of it made me feel better. I would've said no. I never would've said yes, and if I told him that now, it would hurt him unfairly. It was hurting me right now just to think about it. That would've been the end. But I knew my own heart and was very well aware of the way the idea of marriage made me feel. Some people might feel like marriage made their whole world open up. For me, it meant nothing but the beginning of the end. The moment you're trapped. No one gets out happy or alive.
“I’m super excited for you to get here. And you can stay for as long as you like. As long as you can put up with me. That's probably a better way to say it.”
“I’ve waited a long time for this chance. I don't think I'll have any trouble putting up with anything.”
“Well, good. It sounds like you'll have some writing to do while you're here. But that should work out since I'll have to go to work every day.”
“The perils of a day job.”
“Hey. Not all of us can be a rock star. Wait. Sorry. Musician.”
“That's better.”
“Hey. Maybe I'll inspire another song.”
He didn't reply right away, which made me horribly embarrassed. Why did I have to say stuff like that? Eamon couldn't force his creativity in any particular direction and it made me sound like I was fishing. “You never know. I'm hoping I can get everything written before I get to New York. That would be better for me.”
“But then what would you do all day? Sleep?”
“That and convince you to stay home all day.”
I laughed softly and settled back into bed. “Yeah, well, only a few more days of phone sex.”
“I enjoyed it, but it wasn't the same.”
"Yeah. I want to be able to kiss you. That was always my favorite part."
"I think that was my favorite part, too."
Chapter Nine
On the Friday after the engagement party, Amy and I each took the day off from work. It would've been an understatement to say I was excited to see her. After the party and my subsequent conversations with Eamon, I really was determined to prove that I had turned my attitude around. I couldn't pretend to be enthusiastic about the wedding. I had to throw myself into it. I had to be psyched. As maid of honor, it was my duty to do nothing less. My role in this wedding would set the tone for my relationship with my sister for the rest of our lives. I needed her to look back at my efforts fondly, not as though she was dragging me across the finish line.
We met at the diner for breakfast, and Patty was our waitress.
“What'll it be for the bride-to-be and her big sister?” Patty winked at me as she impatiently tapped her pen against the order pad.
“I’ll do the diner breakfast.” I'd made a point of getting a full night's sleep. Today was a big day. “Scrambled eggs. Bacon. Sourdough toast.” Apparently it was also a day for eating like a lumberjack.
“Egg white omelette,” Amy said. I suspected she'd been eating like a bird. She looked skinny. Or smaller. Or maybe just different.
“Two coffees?” Patty asked, but she didn't really need to.
“Please,” we answered in unison.
Patty headed back to the kitchen. Amy and I looked at each other for a minute, not saying anything when one of the other waitresses delivered our coffee and cream. I wanted her to take the lead. I wanted her to pull out a three-ring binder full of pages torn from bridal magazines. I wanted her to give me a to-do list a mile long. But she wasn't doing any of that. She was just sitting there. Being quiet.
“What's on the agenda today?” I stirred cream into my coffee, and decided to force the issue, pulling the supplies I’d brought out of my bag. “This is the calendar I made to keep me organized.” I turned it around and pushed it to her side of the table, opening the front page. “I’m pretty proud of it. I went to Kinokuniya and dug around in the stationery section for an hour.” That was one of my favorite stores in the entire city, a beautiful three-level Japanese bookstore across the street from Bryant Park. “I got the blank pages and this pretty silver binder. I even made the cover.” I closed it up and there was my masterpiece—Luke and Amy, December 16, in my admittedly less than stellar handwriting, with a multitude of hearts fanning out around it. Middle school me would've been duly impressed.
“I have a calendar,” she snipped. “Why would you think I don't have a calendar?”
“It's not that I thought you didn't have one. This is mine. To keep me organized for all of the stuff you need me to do. I just thought it should be pretty.”
“It's weird.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Why are you being like this?”
“Like what, exactly?”
“So over the top. It's not like you.” She sat back and wrapped her arms around her waist.
She wasn't wrong. It wasn't like me. But I was trying, dammit. Didn't I deserve some credit for that? “I want to do a good job. You're my sister and I love you. I want your wedding to be everything you want it to be.”
Patty motored over with our food, sliding the plates onto the table. “I’ll get you ladies a refill on coffee. Anything else?”
I shook my head and forced a smile. “No. Thank you. We're good.”
Amy spread her napkin out on her lap. “Okay. Just don’t go overboard. Big, fancy weddings are so old-fashioned.”
Was that meant to be a slag against my art project? Or maybe my age? Either way, I didn't appreciate it.
“We want everything to be low-key and low stress and simple,” she continued. “Tasteful.”
The bad sister part of me wanted to point out that although I had yet to visit it in person, something told me that Luke's parents' country club was
likely to be as far from low-key and simple as I was lacking in enthusiasm for attending events held at country clubs. But it was her wedding. I needed to cast aside my own agenda. And my opinions. And pretty much anything else belonging to me. I took back the calendar and tucked it inside my bag. “Sorry. I was just, you know…” What? Feeling psychotic? “Excited. But I want whatever you want. So tell me what we're tackling today.”
“Shoes and the dress. You've already seen the dress, but I want you to come for my fitting. I've picked out my shoes, and they're on hold, but I want your opinion.”
It didn't sound like she needed my help with much of anything other than standing there and validating her choices. Maybe the rest would come later. “Sounds fun. What else?”
“We have to pick out the flowers.”
“Oh.”
Amy looked up from her breakfast and I knew exactly what she was saying. The flowers were going to be tough. Really tough. If she were still alive, the flowers would've been Mom's domain. No questions asked.
“I have an idea of what I want already,” Amy said. “But you can tell me if you think it will look okay. Obviously you're the expert when it comes to color and it's one of the only pops of color we're using. Everything else is white and silver. Very subtle. Classic.”
“Does that mean you decided to go with silver for our dresses?” Right before Amy had moved out, she'd shown me her choice and I had done my best to dissuade her.
Amy finished her bite of food and dug through her bag. “Yes, I went with silver, but this one is different from the one I showed you.” Finally, she handed me a page torn out of a magazine. This was more like it. “I already sent the link to the other bridesmaids. You have to order it online. I spoke to the company and they said that it shouldn't need any alterations. The bias cut is very forgiving.”
I nearly spat my coffee across the table. My sister was not only putting us in silver satin, that so-called forgiving bias cut was a freaking bullhorn for figure flaws. Just thinking about it made me regret my decision to have toast. I should've skipped the carbs. But I couldn't say anything. “Pretty. Very pretty. The, uh, other bridesmaids already have the link?” Why in the hell had I not been consulted on this choice? That was going to be my silver ass walking up the aisle, not hers.
“Yeah. I wanted to talk to you about your dress first. I wasn't sure you would want to wear the same thing they're wearing. Sometimes the maid of honor has a different dress. It just has to be silver. And satin.”
I wasn't about to spend the next several weeks hunting down a dress that met her criteria. Keeping things simple right now was the best course. “I want whatever you want. If you want us all to be matching, I'll get this. Is that what you want? For us all to look the same?”
“You don't have an opinion?”
“I want whatever you want.”
“Okay. I want you to all be matching.”
“Sounds great. Send me the link or I'll write down the info.” I tried to hide my growing disappointment. This wasn't the way I had envisioned this going. It was starting to feel like today was a token. Like my sister was throwing me a bone. “Walk me through everything else you need me to do. Address invitations? Coordinate the DJ? You know I make the best dance playlists. I can be a flower girl wrangler. Kids love me. Give me a job and I promise I'll do exactly what you want.”
“Luke's mom is running with most of that. I'm letting her call the shots.”
“But you said she was making you crazy.”
“I mean, they belong to the country club and I guess she's thrown tons of amazing events there. Luke's two brothers both got married there, so she has it pretty dialed-in by now with the catering and the rentals. It's sort of a family tradition at this point and I don't want to rock the boat, you know?”
Yet more of Luke and his perfectly perfect pod-person family taking over everything. I picked at my food. “What about a shower? I can throw you a shower.”
Amy looked up and wiped her mouth with the napkin. “We got a ton of gifts at the engagement party. And…” Her shoulders dropped and she stared out the diner window.
“And what?”
“Luke's sister is already throwing me a shower.”
“Shelly? She's in college. What does she know about throwing a shower?”
“I have no clue, Katherine. Am I supposed to ask someone for their credentials when they tell me they want to throw me a bridal shower?”
“You didn't even give me the chance to organize one. You know I'd do a good job. I'm super organized.”
“And who exactly would we invite, Katherine? Our friends? We have almost no mutual friends. Our family? There's nobody on Dad's side and we both know mom's side is a disaster. I can just see Aunt Lucy being a total embarrassment. She's always making comments about how much money people have. The second she meets Luke's family we'd never hear the end of it. And we both know there's no way we can invite Grandma Price.”
Just the mention of Grandma Price, our mom's mom, and I couldn't eat another bite of my breakfast. At least I no longer needed to worry about a few slices of bread coming between me and my bridesmaid's dress. Grandma Price had been absolutely horrible to Dad, Amy, and me after the accident. As horrible as a person could possibly be.
The thing everyone knew about Grandma Price was that she had a highly formed sense of justice. She was also obsessed with Agatha Christie books, re-reading them over and over again just in case there was some tiny clue artfully hidden in the text that she'd somehow missed. She hated the idea that anyone would ever get away with anything, which made it zero fun to go to her house. If you stole a cookie out of the cookie jar, you had better be prepared to pay for it with your life.
Grandpa Price had been a police detective, a small-town sleuth tackling school vandalism and the occasional rash of newspaper theft. After work every day, he would tell Grandma everything that had happened, even the stuff he wasn't supposed to because he was in the middle of an ongoing investigation. The instant she got the call from our Dad that her youngest daughter had been killed in a car accident, she and Grandpa rushed right over from three towns away, demanding to speak to the police.
That was when things got crazy. Our local detective was a police academy buddy of Grandpa's and showed our grandparents everything—the statement from Dad, an account from me since Amy's injuries gave her a reprieve on reliving the nightmare, and the photographs of the scene. Amy and I never saw the pictures, but I didn't need to imagine what they looked like. I'd lived it.
After their visit to the police station, our Grandparents came to the hospital where Amy had been admitted and just spent the night. They charged into her room, all hellfire and damnation, demanding an explanation from our father. They said that the police had told them and shown them everything. Dad did his best in the situation, but Amy and I were both in rough shape—Amy, physically, and me, mentally. Grandma pressed hard for a chance to speak to me alone out in the hall. I was terrified of her, of every horrible thing she'd been hissing at our dad, but more than anything, I didn't want to leave Amy's bedside. That massive hospital bed practically swallowed her up. She was so out of it that she couldn't even keep her eyes open. For as scared as I was before, during, and after the accident, I was equally petrified at the hospital.
But Dad made me do it anyway. He said it would be good for me to spend some time with my grandmother. He sent me out into that hospital hallway with her. I will never forget the way she grabbed my arm the instant we were out of sight of my father, or the way she marched me down to the bank of elevators.
“Where are we going?” I'd asked, up to my neck in panic.
“The hospital chapel. You have some praying to do. You need to tell God that you're sorry.” She didn't let go of my arm. When we got to the ground floor, she pinched harder to corral me off the elevator.
“Sorry for what?” It was a legitimate question. I'd just been through something no kid should ever have to go through and there she was, telling me t
o apologize?
“For telling your father. You caused him to misjudge her. God is the only judge, Katherine. And children have no place telling a grown-up's secrets.”
That last part was what really put me over the edge. I stopped in my tracks and wrung myself out of her grip like a wild animal. “She should've kept it a secret. She shouldn't have dragged me and Amy into it.”
I'd braced for a violent rebuttal. Grandma Price had yelled at me many times before that day. She was the Shakespeare of stern talking-tos. But instead, she started to cry. She leaned back against the hideous mint green wall right there in the middle of the hospital and slid all the way to the floor, crumpling in a heap. Visitors walked by and stared at us. A nurse stopped and asked if we needed help, but Grandma shooed her away.
I have no idea why, but I ran to her. I wanted to comfort her. She was so obviously hurting, and I wanted someone to share my own pain with. “Grandma. It's okay. We're all sad.” With every inch of my adult self I could still remember what it was like to sit on that linoleum floor and wait for a hug from my grandmother. Maybe a few kind words. I'm so sorry, sweetie. You're right. Come here.
“I lost my daughter and I feel like I lost my granddaughter, too.”
“Amy's going to be fine, Grandma. She just has a broken wrist and a concussion.”
That was when the anger returned. The color in her eyes was like something out of a movie about demons or monsters. It wasn't human. It wasn't normal at all. “Not Amy. You. I lost you yesterday, Katherine. I can't look at you ever again. All I'll ever see is my dead daughter.”
I couldn't remember what happened after that. I must've either blacked out or blocked it from my memory. The only thing I could recall was what happened when Dad and I went home that night, my suitcase and Amy’s were waiting on the front porch. Apparently the police had brought them back to the house.
“What are these?” Dad asked.
It broke my heart to have to tell him. “Mom packed our suitcases before she made us get in the car to go to his house.”
He cleared his throat. “So she really was taking you to live with him.”