Chapter 12
By the time the wedding party finished with the photographs at the church and arrived at the country club, the guests were already enjoying hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, filling the large room with well-bred din and the mingled scents of cologne.
Grace’s beautiful decorations lent importance to the occasion. Emmie adjusted the sling that Sarah Bea, the only Sessoms girl who sewed, had made. She had been up most of the night, after scouring fabric shops on Friday to find the material that matched her dress. Say what you would about the Sessoms’ belief they had a right to run Pickett’s life (and by extension, Emmie’s), they also spared no effort to make every detail of their sister’s wedding perfect. No ugly blue sling would be a jarring note in the wedding photos.
It allowed her arm to swing though, and Emmie cradled her elbow in her opposite hand as she worked her way along the edges of the crowd. Pickett and Jax and the others were immediately surrounded by well-wishers eager to exclaim over the beauty of the ceremony. She needed to reassure herself that the cake really was okay.
Senior Chief Lon Swales blocked her path. “Don’t be too obvious about looking at the cake,” Lon advised, having read her intentions. “We don’t want to call attention to it.”
He looked impressive in a blue uniform decorated with rows of gold braid on the sleeves and his massive chest loaded with insignia. His light green eyes swept over her, and the crow’s feet around them deepened. There was something kindly about his appreciation.
“Hel- lo, Emmie!” The lingering perusal Davy gave her cleavage when he appeared at the senior chief’s side a moment later wasn’t kindly at all. The glistening brown of his eyes was deepened by his Navy uniform, and his expression was decidedly wolfish. It was so different from his dismissal of her earlier, she was taken aback. If not for the senior chief’s comforting presence she might have been either alarmed by Davy’s distinctly sexual appraisal or offended. As it was, an unaccustomed swell of power made her straighten rather than cringe. She might even be tempted to test the extent of that power, if she didn’t have more important things on her mind.
“Have you looked at it?” she asked Lon. “Does the dent in the frosting look too bad?” Even with three pairs of hands, removing one tier and substituting another hadn’t gone quite as planned. The marzipan decorations weren’t placed exactly as they had been on the original, and it had been necessary to stick the cascading ribbon into place with surgical glue supplied by Davy, who didn’t travel without his medical kit.
“Remember, nobody but Grace knows what it was supposed to look like.” Lon’s expression changed in some way she couldn’t quantify the same instant that Caleb materialized at her side. She couldn’t imagine how they’d accomplished it, but she was suddenly sure that Lon intercepting her had been no accident.
Caleb and Jax, since the wedding was formal, were wearing ceremonial or dress uniforms-the Navy’s equivalent to a tuxedo. Gold braid slashes on the sleeve indicated his chief petty officer rank and more insignia than she could identify dotted his chest. She recognized the Trident, nicknamed the Budweiser because of its resemblance to that famous trademark. Fully one-third of his chest was covered with bright gold medals. The sight was intended to impress, and it did. “I stopped by the bar to get me a beer and brought you a glass of champagne-I didn’t know what you like,” he said, offering the flute.
Emmie accepted it eagerly. “I’m not much of a drinker. But I do like champagne.” She took a sip, relishing how the tart zing soothed the dryness of her mouth. She also liked the warm weight of his hand on her waist, though she didn’t know exactly how it got there. She snuck a look at his face. Against the deep blue of his uniform, the golden tan of his cheeks took on a burnished look. His eyes appeared more gold than green. Underneath the perpetual lazy amusement he regarded the world with, something gleamed hot. The steady rhythm of her heart stalled before shifting into a slow, heavy thud. She took another, larger swallow.
“Go easy on that. It will go to your head if you’re not used to drinking.” His eyes left hers to flick over the crowd.
“Are you looking for someone?”
“Not now.” The fire was banked when his gaze returned to her. “Later, you can introduce me to Senator Calhoun.”
“Why?” Emmie gasped before she thought. “I wouldn’t have thought you were a celebrity chaser.” His hand left her waist, and he gave her a look as cool as the one a minute ago had been hot. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “That was pretty graceless. I’ll be glad to introduce you.”
“You don’t like Calhoun very much do you?”
“He’s okay, I guess. He has a politician’s gift for seeming genuinely delighted to see one. He’ll say all the right things. You watch-he’ll even ask about my mother-but whenever I’m around him, I always wind up aware of how unimportant an academic is in the greater scheme of things. I shouldn’t blame him or take it personally though. Not many people try to get to know me. I’m pretty dull.”
“Oh no, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am. Most people think someone who loves to teach, who’s perfectly happy with life as a teacher, is dull. I guess it’s because they found school boring when they were kids. Anyway, few eyes light up when I tell them I’m a professor. Unless they’re academics too.”
If she looked like she did tonight, people’s eyes would light up if she said she was a sanitation worker.
“The conservative media has combined effete and intellectual so many times, most think the words are synonymous. God forbid we think those with knowledge have a contribution to make.”
“So you stay in your ivory tower?”
“See, that’s an example of what I’m talking about. People say ‘ivory tower’ with disdain. Few grasp the exhilaration of intellectual daring or respect the discipline of intellectual rigor. What on earth makes them imagine that teaching young people has no value?”
“You’re overstating. People do understand the value of knowledge. The Navy does.”
“You’re right. The largest marine biology research grants come from the Navy. I’m not talking about knowledge. I’m talking about how people who gather it are perceived. Biology professors don’t appear on reality TV. Nobody thinks we are the stuff that dreams are made of.”
“ A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“You know Shakespeare?” The delicate arch of her eyebrows lifted.
“I recognize the quote.” He didn’t know why her surprise irritated him. She had bought his country-boy disguise-which was, after all, his intention.
“Did you know A Midsummer Night’s Dream is set in the New World? The ‘vexed burmoothes’ where the play’s shipwreck occurs is a real place-the Ber
muda Islands, which had recently been discovered. All his audience knew about the burmoothes was that terrible storms struck it, and shipwrecks in the area-Bermuda is off the coast of North Carolina-were common.”
“So Shakespeare was getting his audience to buy into the fantasy by using a setting that was ‘real’ but unexplored. Like Edgar Rice Burrough’s A Princess of Mars.
“Exactly.” She smiled a teacher’s smile at the quick comprehension of the student. “‘Vexed’ refers to the hurricanes common to the area. He is making use of his audience’s expectations about romance and adventure in the New World to establish a point of departure for his story. Uh-oh. I went into lecture mode. Sorry.”
“We’ve wandered away from our topic. Why don’t you think you’re the stuff of dreams?”
“I’m a college professor-actually, not even that. I’m a junior instructor. What’s that Latin phrase that means the point proves itself? My brain seems fuzzy tonight.”
“ Ipso facto,” Caleb supplied.
“Right. Let me put it this way. I’ll bet a lot more romances have been written with SEALs as heroes, than ecology professors as heroines.”
Emmie peered into her champagne flute as if she wasn’t sure what was in it. “There seems to be more veritas than usual in this vino.”
Do- Lord laughed at the look of consternation in her wide, innocent eyes. And at the way she inverted the Latin epigram in vino veritas, there is truth in wine.
Other members of the unit came up, some in uniform, some in civilian dress. He introduced Emmie, but he kept his hand on her waist. The conversation became general, and Emmie’s gaze became unfocused as her mind wandered.
“Emmie!” Sarah Bea’s voice penetrated Emmie’s brain fog. Her head felt disconnected from her body, and she had given in to the confusing babble and constantly shifting crowd. “Pickett’s going to throw the bouquet now instead of later. You and Lyle are the only unmarried bridesmaids. Don’t you know the one who catches the bouquet will be the next to get married?”
“Don’t think I’m going to catch a bouquet,” objected Lyle. “I don’t believe in that superstition, but I also don’t believe in taking chances.”
Sarah Bea rolled her eyes. “You’re impossible,” she said without heat. “Emmie, you go on now.”
Emmie finished the last of her champagne and rose to join the women who thronged at one end of the large room. Hobbled by the long narrow skirt of her bridesmaid dress, she teetered a bit on the high-heeled shoes that amounted to little more than straps.
A little girl, one of the several running in from the side room where the children were having a separate party, caught her hips and steadied her. “Here.” She offered a hand with very, very short polished nails, “I’ll help you get to the front.”
“Do you hope to catch the bouquet?” Emmie had already seen Cousin Annalynn, sixty if she was a day and twice widowed, jockeying for position. “Aren’t you a little young?”
“I’m ten.” The little girl grinned to reveal teeth too large for her face. When the rest of her bone structure caught up she’d probably be striking, but right now, with her dense freckles and dancing eyes, she had a rather appealing homeliness. “I just like to be where the action is.”
The child radiated an intensity that made it easy to believe. “You go to the front where you can see then. I’ll catch up.”
The child scooted between two adults, using her smaller size to find openings in the crowd.
“That’s Teague Calhoun’s little girl,” a thin woman in an exquisite petal pink gown informed her. Like Emmie, she was making no effort to squeeze closer to the women surrounding Pickett. No longer young, the woman had classically perfect features that would have made Emmie feel more like a mud hen than usual- indeed, her beauty would have made most women feel that way. But in her oddly disconnected state Emmie reacted mostly to the wide and fixed look in the woman’s eye.
Emmie knew that look. Like the person was watching a scene of unendurable darkness and couldn’t find the energy or the will to tear her eyes away. She had seen it in refugee camps on the faces of starving people. It was one of the few clear memories she had of early childhood. Her parents had taken her to so many disparate cultures that when snippets surfaced, she had no idea when they happened or where. She thought she remembered the camp because the suffering was intelligible even to a small child. It transcended all considerations of skin color, language, religion, or sex. And that expression had been on everyone’s face.
This woman wasn’t starving. Her lovely dress and the diamonds at her ears announced she lived at the other end of the bell curve from those who couldn’t afford one cup of meal. She smiled in a way that didn’t change her eyes at all. “That little girl will never be a beauty, but in a few years most people will think she is.”
This woman obviously knew a great deal about beauty. A week ago, Emmie would have found the remark shallow. Now she was interested. “Why is that?”
“Well, her mother knows how to dress her and fix her hair. She’ll teach her how to use makeup, walk in heels, and all that-that’s fifty percent. The other fifty percent is attitude. Confidence. Fearlessness. And joie de vivre. Nothing is more attractive.”
Emmie nodded. Caleb had the same qualities, older, hardened, expressed in a masculine way. That must be the reason the child had seemed oddly familiar. She reminded her of Caleb. That, and she’d probably seen the child at some family gathering.
“Don’t you want to catch the bouquet?” the woman asked.
“Pickett can’t throw, and I”-Emmie indicated her useless arm-“can’t catch.”
“Oh, that’s right. You’re Pickett’s college friend, the professor. Sit down and have a glass of champagne. The toasts won’t start until later, but I talked a waiter into opening a bottle for me and leaving it at the table. I should introduce myself though-before you commit yourself to speaking to me. I’m Lauren Babcock.” Lauren’s daughter had recently died, which accounted for the tragic look in her eyes. That she had died of minor, elective surgery must make her death seem even more tragically pointless and hard to come to terms with.
Lauren’s smile twisted. “I’m Jax’s ex-mother-in-law. I feel like Banquo’s ghost.”
Emmie took a chair. “Attending the wedding of the man who was once married to your daughter, albeit briefly, and many years ago, must be unspeakably poignant for you-in the light of your daughter’s recent death.”
Too late. Emmie remembered that was hardly the way to refer to loss in polite company. In America there were as many euphemisms for death as there were for sex. Fortunately, Lauren didn’t seem to be shattered by Emmie’s unvarnished acknowledgement of who and what she wa
s. In fact, for a moment her eyes focused on Emmie’s face. Emboldened, Emmie went on with what she really wanted to understand. “But why do you call yourself Banquo’s ghost? He was the symbol of Macbeth’s guilty conscience, wasn’t he? Have you come here to accuse someone? Nobody here murdered your daughter.”
“No, of course not. I didn’t mean it that way. I was thinking about how unwelcome the ghost would have been to the people at the feast, and how it felt to him to be invisible.”
Emmie could just imagine how many people had pretended not to see her, while whispering about her behind their hands. Lauren, widow of a successful and well-known businessman, had been a society leader. Many of the guests probably knew her and would prefer not to offend her. But they also knew Jax and Pickett had to marry quickly in order to shut out Lauren’s bid for custody of Tyler in the wake of his mother’s death. They thought it was terrible that Lauren would try to take his child away. It made for an awkward social situation at best.
Emmie was on Pickett’s side, but she didn’t see Lauren’s bid for custody as quite so black-and-white. Emmie was the child of people whose dedication had warred with their duty as parents. They had sent her to her grandmother to raise-a woman who did her duty but resisted emotional involvement.
After his mother died, Tyler had needed someone to care for him full time, and Lauren had been more able to do that than his often absent father. If Pickett hadn’t entered the picture, for Lauren to have custody would have been logical. Although she didn’t agree, Emmie could understand why Lauren thought she was doing the right thing. At least in years to come, Tyler would know that his grandmother had wanted him.
Sealed with a promise Page 12