Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2)

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  “What happened with Bart?” I asked, climbing in next to Taylor’s car seat.

  “He congratulated me on our engagement and said that nothing makes a better alliance than a common enemy.”

  “What do you think he meant?”

  Taylor thrashed in his seat. It was past his bedtime, and he was fighting off sleep with all he had.

  “I don’t know. Before I could ask, Jacoby jumped in and asked Bart if Tarah’s spirit was letting him sleep at night. Bart looked a little spooked, so I told him to kindly get the fuck away from our table.”

  “Tarah, his old restaurant manager?”

  “I assumed so.” Nick smoothed the hair back from Taylor’s forehead as he drove. “Jacoby said he talked to Derek’s parole officer. He’s scheduled to check in with her on Saturday. She said she can’t do anything until he’s been arrested or she has proof he failed to meet the conditions of his parole.”

  Which we didn’t have. “Ugh. I’m sorry.”

  Nick reached over Taylor and we locked hands across his lap. “No, I’m sorry. I’m the one who dragged you into this mess with Derek.”

  “No more than I dragged you into mine with Bart.”

  “We’re quite a pair,” he said. “Hey, I know. Why don’t we get married this Saturday?”

  “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Nick and I spent most of the next day shuttling our wedding guests from the airport up to Annalise. By late afternoon, we’d all gathered on the patio for a rehearsal and Collin was misbehaving, in typical Collin fashion. He had just quick-stepped me down the aisle to the spot of grass behind the pool where we would hold the ceremony the next day.

  Duke Ellis, a local attorney I’d partnered with the year before to defend Ava, would officiate. Kurt, Nick’s father and best man, waited with Rashidi and Nick on the groom’s side of the aisle, and Emily and Ava waited on mine. Nick’s assistant LuLu had her tattooed arms wrapped around Taylor as they waited for their chance to bring the rings, and Nick’s mom, Julie, stood to one side trying to keep everyone in their places just long enough that we could call this practice round a success.

  Attorney Ellis said, “So then I’ll say, ‘Who gives this woman to be married to this man?’”

  Collin answered, “And I’ll say our parents and I do, since it is rumored that the groom has knocked her up.”

  I slugged Collin in his rather large bicep. He didn’t flinch.

  “Ignore him. He’s always like this, through no fault of my parents,” I said, mostly to my new in-laws, whom I had known for less than a day. But Julie was laughing and Kurt was smiling, so I figured we were in the clear. We went through the motions of the rest of the ceremony quickly and cheerfully.

  After Duke told Nick to kiss the bride—and my brother wished my almost-husband luck—Nick reached out and pulled me gently to him. My body moved to his like the end of a magnet to its north. He looked down into my eyes and held my gaze as he spoke to our guests.

  “Some of you may have wondered why we moved so fast with all of this. But when you know you’ve found the one, why wait for forever to start?”

  Oh, how I adored that man. I could count up all the things I loved about him—the way he made me laugh, his soft spot for kids and dogs, his great butt . . . I could go on and on. But you can’t sum for love by adding up good qualities and multiplying by a factor of merit. Love is a prime number. Nick was my one.

  Later that evening after a gigantic cookout on the beach, we returned to the patio to hang out while the sun set. We’d rented plenty of tables and chairs and we lit the tiki torches and passed around cans of mosquito repellant. The no-see-ums always attack newcomers first.

  LuLu had taken a shine to my brother, who in turn was shining on Emily, which he was prone to do and she was prone to ignore. The three of them sat together drinking painkillers, a pineapple-coconut-orange rum drink that Emily suffered for on her last visit to St. Marcos, which seemed like ages ago. I’d thought she would never touch them again.

  LuLu turned to me. “Katie, Nick said you’re a singer, but Collin said you’re an attorney. I’m so confused.”

  Ava came over and said, “She both, but I hear she better at lawyering.”

  “Ouch,” I said. Everyone laughed.

  Ava still had on her wedding-rehearsal-beach-barbeque-appropriate red spandex tube dress with the keyhole neckline. She pulled a chair up beside me and sat. “I let you practice with me.” Lulu clapped with delight.

  Emily said, “I’ve seen them, and they’re fabulous.”

  Ava started snapping her fingers and singing a song from Grease.

  I jumped right in. “Summer lovin,’ happened so fast.”

  Nick jumped up from the next table and jogged into the house as everyone else joined in and it became a sing-along. We had nearly finished when he reappeared with a Fender bass hanging from his neck and an amplifier in one hand, cord dragging behind him. He bent down and plugged it in.

  As we reached the last line, “those su-uh-mer ni-hights” the bass came in, electric and rumbly. Nick fingered the last long note for effect, then did a Pete Townsend jump at the end.

  We cheered ourselves madly. Nick said, “With greatest appreciation to my father, who brought my bass from Texas.”

  “Yup,” Kurt said, from his table by the pool. He dipped his head and Julie clapped Taylor’s hands together beside him.

  It was the first time I’d heard Kurt speak. Nick had told me that his father was from Maine, as if that explained something. I’d never known a Mainer before, but I was willing to bet they didn’t talk much.

  From there, Ava and I went into an ethereal rendition of the Indigo Girls song “The Wood.” I almost didn’t make it through, standing there in front of everyone I loved the best, between Nick and Ava in my most favorite place on earth . . . it was too much and not enough at the same time. Seeing Nick’s parents’ clasped hands and Taylor asleep in Julie’s lap made my loss so clear. But at the same time, how could one heart take any more joy?

  At the end of the night, Nick limped off to make nighttime bed checks and lock the doors and I went to the kitchen for glasses of water. I heard footsteps coming up the stairs and turned around to see Emily peering around the corner, her blonde hair in the lead. Its height and volume after a day of travel and a night of revelry truly amazed me.

  “Yoo hoo,” she called, coming into the kitchen and putting her arms around me.

  “Hi, Em,” I said, hugging her back.

  “I’m so happy things worked out for you and Nick,” she said. “I was worried when you said you were getting back together with Bart. I know I kind of pushed you toward him in the beginning to help you get over Nick, but—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said. “I never said I was getting back together with Bart. I never even considered it.”

  Nick appeared in the doorway behind Emily. His jaw was clenched, his eyes wounded. I shook my head no at him.

  “But I got a text from you that said that,” Emily said, wrinkling her brow.

  “I didn’t send anything like that.” I suddenly had a really sickening feeling.

  Emily turned around and saw Nick. “Oh, you’re right,” she said. “I remember now.”

  “Do you still have it?” I asked. “Like in a string? I want to see it.”

  “I don’t know.” Her eyes were wide.

  “Emily, you don’t have to pretend for Nick. If you got a text like that, I want to see it. He knows I wouldn’t send it. But weird things have happened around here, and this could be one of them.”

  Emily looked back and forth between Nick and me, then wailed, “Oh, God, I feel terrible.”

  “Don’t,” Nick said. He walked in and put his arm around me from behind and his chin on my shoulder. “I’ll leave you guys to figure this out. Emily looks traumatized.” He kissed the side of my head. “Hurry, though?”

  “Of course,” I said, and he headed for
our bedroom. “Now, Em, show me the text.”

  We went downstairs to Emily’s room for her iPhone and she clicked the button to scroll back through the message string.

  “Here,” she said. She held the phone out to me.

  I read it aloud. “‘I wanted you to know I am getting back together with Bart.’”

  She had responded, “Wow, that’s sudden. Are you OK?”

  No reply.

  The next text was from me, a day later. “Bart is nuts. What did I ever see in him?” And her reply, “I am so glad to hear you say that.” And me, “Team Nick, baby.”

  “See?” she said.

  “Yes. It’s very strange.”

  I looked at the date on the odd text. May seventh. That was right after Nick’s first visit. I closed my eyes and took myself back. No doubt I’d sent the “Bart is nuts” text.

  Then it started coming to me. White dress. The Boardwalk. Tomato juice. Wanting to tell Nick about what Bart had done, but not able to because I didn’t have my phone. I opened my eyes, and found Emily staring at me, and twirling a finger in the ends of her hair.

  “I had a gig with Ava that night, and I didn’t have my phone with me because I couldn’t find it. A few hours later, when I got home, it was under my pillow.”

  Emily wrinkled her nose. “What do you think happened?”

  Bart had creeped in my space, he’d stolen my phone, he’d handled my pillow to put it back. Really, the whole idea of it freaked me out. And I got to find out about it the night before my wedding.

  Well, fine. I wasn’t letting him—or anyone or anything else—spoil even one iota of my happiness.

  I pointed to the text that said Bart is nuts. “That pretty much says it all.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  By four o’clock on Saturday, we had transformed Annalise. Emily, Julie, LuLu, and I gathered pink trumpet vines in the forest after breakfast and spent the morning weaving them through a wire arch in the back yard to make an altar. Ava had promised to come after she helped her parents in their store, which I took to mean after she’d rolled out of bed at noon and blown her parents a kiss as she drove by their place. We finished the arch without her and stood back to admire our work.

  “Something’s missing,” Emily said, cocking her head.

  LuLu circled the arch. “It looks pretty to me.”

  “It is pretty,” Julie said. “Katie, do you have any tulle? And maybe some glitter?”

  “I have glitter. I’m not sure about the tulle.”

  We went inside and searched my closet and drawers until Julie held up an ivory skirt with a tulle overlay. “Could we use this?”

  Emily lifted the bottom of the skirt to display it in all its glory. “How vintage Jessica McClintock of you,” she teased. “Where did you wear this?”

  I shot her a sideways look.

  Lulu said, “You could cut that off and put it with some combat boots and it would be awesome.”

  I smiled. Lulu’s pink hair and nose stud would finish out that look just right. If I didn’t already know how smart and capable Nick thought she was, I would have written her off at first glance as a punk kid.

  I handed Julie a pair of scissors. “Be my guest.”

  Thirty minutes later, the arch was fairy-tale ready. We made matching centerpieces for the patio tables out of the leftover tulle and decided that Martha Stewart couldn’t have done it any better.

  Meanwhile, Nick, Collin, and his father gave the grounds a trim and swabbed the decks out back. When I started getting a wee bit stressed midafternoon, Nick commandeered the men to mop inside the house. My friends foraged for snacks as I stood at the kitchen island and breathed deeply. My pulse slowed down in direct proportion to the concentration of Pine-Sol in the air.

  “Your freckles have gotten darker,” Emily said as she poured a bag of microwave popcorn into a bowl, “and your pupils are like saucers. Are you OK?”

  “Nothing a little sparkling water can’t fix,” I said as I poured myself one. “I think it’s all just hitting me at once.”

  “Isn’t it time for you to beautify?” Emily asked, hooking me by the arm.

  “Yes, let’s,” LuLu said, and slipped her arm through Julie’s.

  We set up our snacks and beauty camp in the master bedroom. I laid my dress out on the bed and we gathered around it to oooh and aaaah, but before we could do it justice, Nick walked in.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  LuLu stood in front of the dress with her arms out wide to block his view. “No, no, no,” she said.

  “Out, mister,” Emily ordered. “You won’t see her again until she walks out to marry your ass, so be nice and kiss your fiancée goodbye for the last time.”

  Nick swooped me over backwards and kissed me. When he set me back on my feet, I fanned my face. “Be still my heart.”

  “See you in a few hours, baby.”

  I waggled my fingers in a goodbye gesture and Emily and LuLu said, “Goodbye, Nick.”

  I heard Ava’s voice as she approached, singing the Captain & Tennille’s Wedding Song like a show tune. It was shift change time at the girl party. LuLu and Julie kissed my cheek and left to shower in their own bathrooms, and Ava, bearing a bulging cloth bag, slipped in the door right afterwards. I was alone with my two best friends.

  “I promise not to let Emily touch your hair,” she said in a stage whisper, unzipping her valise and dumping it on the bed.

  “And I promise not to let her dress you,” Emily vowed. She looked at the pile of strikingly small outfits and asked Ava, “What are those, anyway?”

  Ava grabbed a nail file from my bedside table and flopped down beside her clothes. “After-party options.”

  Emily and I exchanged a glance. “After party? It’s called a reception,” she said.

  “OK, reception options. What are you going to wear?”

  “I was just planning on wearing my bridesmaid dress,” Emily said.

  Ava raised her eyes from the serious business of her nails to look at me. “Do I have to?”

  Unfortunately, I hadn’t chosen cheetah-print micro minis, and satin was not Ava’s favorite textile. “Only until we finish pictures,” I said. “Now, I’m getting in a bubble bath, and I promise, neither of you are going to touch my hair or my dress.” I shut myself in the bathroom and rotated the valves on my claw-foot tub to full-blast hot.

  Neither of my best friends would have chosen my dress, but I loved it. I ordered it from Nordstrom’s: a sequined ivory bodice with a V-neck and spaghetti straps and a wrap-style mid-calf skirt. Much to Ava’s chagrin, I was wearing it with her pearled flip-flops. “They for the beach,” she’d said. And when Nick put the gold band on my finger—or back on my finger, rather, since I’d been wearing it for an engagement ring for the over a month—I would be wearing something worn by my mother and her mother before her. I slipped into the tub just as Emily walked in.

  “You need some smell-good,” she said. “Matches?”

  “Left-hand drawer.”

  She got them out and lit the big jasmine candle on the counter, then she pulled out her phone. “Music.” She pressed the screen and Patsy Cline started to sing “Always.”

  “Thank you, Em.”

  She put a finger over her lips, flipped off the light switch, and shut the door. I sank down into the water up to my smile. The muffled sounds of Emily and Ava chatting outside the door only added another layer to the perfection.

  An hour later, the three of us were standing abreast in the bathroom putting on makeup. Time was racing faster and faster. I heard the first cars starting to arrive. Doors slammed. My heart galloped in my chest. I applied eyeliner, mascara, and lipstick as Ava and Emily continued chattering on either side of me, but I barely heard them. I hardly noticed when LuLu and Julie joined us. I was marrying Nick. I had never been more excited about anything in my life. I was ready. Now, now, now, my heartbeat said.

  I looked into the mirror and dropped my lipstick to the floor. Th
ere were five faces, but none of them was mine. I blinked and gave my head a shake. Impossible. Julie handed me the lipstick and gave me a funny look.

  I looked back into the mirror. This time I saw four women and myself. Annalise had disappeared. A knot welled in my throat. I swallowed, but it stayed firmly lodged.

  A knock on the bedroom door. “It’s time, ladies.” Collin. With kisses on my cheek, my friends left the bathroom. I followed them into the bedroom.

  As she reached the bedroom door, Julie turned back to me and put her hand on my arm. “I’m really happy you and Nick found each other, Katie. Kurt and I both are.”

  A tear threatened my mascara. “Thank you, Julie. I’m very lucky.”

  And then only Collin and I remained. My big brother, the one who would stand in Dad’s shoes tonight.

  “You’re gorgeous, sis. I’m proud of you. Mom and Dad would be, too.” The tear in my eye was catching. I used the handkerchief I had wrapped around my bouquet of orchids to wipe his away.

  “I love you, Collin. Thanks for being here. For everything.”

  “I brought you something blue.” He pulled a little piece of paper out of his pocket.

  “What is it?”

  He handed it to me. It was a tiny printed picture of my father in his dress blue uniform when he was the Dallas chief of police. “I thought you could tuck it in your flowers or something. He’d want to be the one to walk down the aisle with you.”

  I didn’t trust myself to speak, just slid the picture under the satin ribbon around my bouquet. I nodded at him, my lips tight. He nodded back. He stuck out his arm, I took it, and its warmth under my hand flooded through me. My family. We were it.

  The sound of steel pans playing the wedding march floated up to us from the back yard as we made our way carefully downstairs and out to the patio into the soft yellow August light. It was warm, even though the sun was setting. Down the flower-strewn path between the tables my brother and I walked, around toward the arch at the far end of the pool, where Nick was waiting for me.