Twice Upon a Wedding

by Jean Stone

  “I have a new life,” her mother said then. “I’m happy you’ve found some closure about your father.”

  Jo took her mother’s hand, the left hand that now wore Ted Cappelinni’s thick gold wedding band. “I think we both have,” she said, and Marion nodded once again. “It will be okay, then,” Jo asked, “if I move back into the house?” She hadn’t decided until right then. It no longer seemed too big or in need of too much work. She didn’t care that her furniture didn’t match. The old house simply was home.

  Marion smiled, and they sat and watched the water until the night grew dark.

  44

  The time passed quickly to Thanksgiving Day. Elaine had been caught up in menus and meetings with caterers, trying to find the right one for the Benson wedding and beyond. So far, she’d come up empty.

  She had not told the others she’d be alone on the holiday; she knew they’d assume her kids would be with her. Jo was going to cook dinner for her mother and Ted and half of Ted’s family, for Sarah and Burch (Jason was on the road again), and for Lily and Frank. Andrew had not been invited.

  After the kids left for their father’s (and apparently Beatrix’s again), she made a cup of tea. She thought about her father and wondered if he’d make quail with chestnut stuffing and cranberry chutney at Mrs. Tuttle’s son’s house, the way he’d always made it at theirs. She wondered if Beatrix went to any trouble, or if she bought one of Ted’s precooked “holiday family dinners and fixin’s.”

  She looked out the kitchen window, thinking of holidays gone past. There would be new ones ahead, new memories as yet unmapped. But for now, Elaine knew in her heart that to look to the future, she must first come to terms with the past.

  With that thought in mind, she set down her mug, went into the back hall, and began to unseal the cartons of her mother’s things.

  The only thing Andrew could do was go with them. Patty wouldn’t like it, Cassie might or might not, but it was the only thing he could imagine. Which was why, the night before, he’d packed a couple of suitcases and shoved them under the sofa, next to his old copies of Buzz.

  He sat through a late-afternoon Thanksgiving dinner with their neighbor, Mrs. Connor, at her house, with one eye on his cottage, waiting for Patty to show up. He and Cassie hadn’t talked about it, but he knew her suitcases were packed, too.

  During pie made from the pumpkins Cassie had helped Mrs. Connor can, the woman said, “So, Cassie, you’re going to Australia!”

  Cassie winced a little. Then she chewed her pie; she took a drink of milk. She turned to Andrew. “Maybe until Christmas, Dad. Will that be okay?”

  He tried to be supportive, noble, strong. But all he could taste was defeat; all he could see was the disinterested look on Patty’s face when she left them years ago. Still, she was Cassie’s mother. And Cassie seemed to need her now. It was that women-thing, he suspected. That baffling shift in female hormones that he was ill-equipped to understand.

  Andrew wiped his mouth, set his napkin beside his plate.

  “I told you it would be your decision. What time is your mother coming?”

  Cassie shrugged. “She said she’d have dinner in the city, then drive up early this evening.”

  So that was that, the deed was done. He hoped he’d still have time to do what needed doing now before breaking the news that he was going, too.

  Andrew stood up. “Thanks so much for dinner, Mrs. Connor. Cassie, promise you won’t leave before I get back? There’s someone I need to see.”

  Cassie promised.

  Then he was gone.

  Jo had been spending more and more time at her mother’s house since that jackass who lived in her building had duped her. Andrew assumed that’s where she’d made Thanksgiving dinner, not that he’d been invited. When he reached the old colonial, he realized he’d been right. Cars were parked this way and that up and down the driveway; some were scattered like colorful pick-up sticks all across the lawn. Sarah’s truck was there; Lily’s pint-sized Mercedes, too. He felt the slight; he let it go. He was there for a much bigger reason.

  He parked his car among the others, then went to the back porch.

  “Andrew,” Jo said. She was dressed in pale aqua jeans and a matching sweater. She looked beautiful but tired. Well, why wouldn’t she be? She’d been working like crazy these past weeks.

  “Smells like turkey,” Andrew said through the screen door.

  Jo opened it. “Please. Come in. Have you eaten?”

  He nodded but stayed where he was rooted. “We ate with the neighbors.” He supposed he should have said “neighbor” without the “s.” Another lie that someday, he thought, he might have to confess too. He shifted on one foot. “Jo,” he said, “I need to talk to you. Alone.”

  She stepped out onto the porch, closing the scents and sounds behind her. Folding her arms, she leaned against the railing.

  “I’ve come here to confess,” Andrew said. He tried to keep his eyes focused squarely on hers. The act was difficult. “I’m leaving for Australia later tonight, so I suppose I have nothing to lose. I had planned to tell you at the Benson wedding, though I doubt I could have lasted that long.”

  She didn’t say a word. He wished she would.

  “I want you to know the truth about me, Jo. I haven’t been honest with any of you.”

  Someone inside the house—had it been Lily?—let out a boisterous laugh.

  He blinked.

  Jo blinked.

  Then Andrew drew in another breath and, finally, he began.

  He started from day one, as he had with Elaine. He started with the day he’d met John in New York City, when John asked Andrew to write “Real Women.”

  She sucked in her lower lip just a little and held it there with her teeth. But she made no comment.

  So Andrew continued. He told her about his past: about his former career, about his train wreck of a marriage, about the fact that Cassie was really his daughter.

  Still, Jo said nothing.

  His throat was dry now. His lower back started to hurt from standing there, holding back his emotions while he spilled his guts. “And I never got the hang of doing brunch, so I guess I’ve even failed at being gay,” Andrew added, hoping his words would pull her teeth from her lip and bring a small smile to her face.

  It didn’t.

  “It was supposed to be simple,” he said when he was finished, “and now it’s so complicated. I’m so sorry. I only meant the best for everyone. Especially for you.”

  She didn’t say thanks for coming or for telling the truth. If only she’d say something—anything—it would make him feel that this wasn’t totally in vain. But Jo simply stood there and averted her eyes.

  Andrew turned and said, “Well, I guess it’s over, then.” He meant to say more, to tell her how he felt about her, but he suddenly choked. It was apparent from her silence that she wouldn’t have cared.

  He drew in a last, humbling breath.

  “Don’t worry about the Benson wedding,” he added. “It will go on. Irene is quite taken by all of you, by Second Chances.”

  He nodded then, and left the back porch and Jo Lyons’s life.

  On the way home, Andrew stopped at Elaine’s. He found her immersed in old pictures and musty memorabilia. He told her about his confession to Jo. He thanked her for keeping his secrets. Then he told her he was going to Australia.

  “You couldn’t find a better way of hiding out from the Benson wedding?”

  He laughed. He shook his head. “Believe me, it isn’t the excuse I would have picked.”

  Elaine offered a wry smile. “Will you come back?” she asked.

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  She held her arms out, then she hugged him. “I was counting on that dance. The first one at the Bensons’ wedding.”

  “I’ll be with you in spirit,” he replied. “I really mean that, Lainey.”

  She wiped a tear from her cheek. “We’ll miss you. Maybe me, most of all.” More tea
rs quickly followed. “Hey, maybe in your next column you can write about how sometimes men make women cry.”

  He laughed again, hugged her back, and couldn’t help but wish he’d had that reaction from Jo.

  After Andrew left, Elaine returned to the cartons, all opened now, their contents lined up on the kitchen table and counters. “I’m so sorry, Mom,” she whispered. “I think I’ve finally forgiven myself for having made some mistakes, for not being perfect.”

  Then she grinned a wide grin as she surveyed the pieces of her mother’s life, a life that had been gentle and trusting and grateful. She thought of her father: Her mother was gone, but he was still there. She would make an ongoing effort to bring him back into her life. It wasn’t too late for that.

  With that, Elaine set aside some of her mother’s favorite jewelry, then put the photos and playbills and menus from McNulty’s back in the boxes. Someday, perhaps, her kids would enjoy poking through them. But when she picked up a menu from McNulty’s, Elaine had a sudden idea.

  It was an idea as clear as the one she’d had that day on the lawn of Ted and Marion’s wedding: She would stop interviewing caterers who’d never be like her dad. Instead, Elaine McNulty Thomas would start a catering business of her own, a business that would serve Second Chances and other customers, too.

  She would either learn to cook or she would hire someone. But it would be done, and it would be hers, and its backbone would be rooted in the McNulty’s of the past, with Veal Medallions and Toasted Basil Pasta and even White Chocolate Lace Bridal Veils, if she could master the damned things.

  She resealed the cartons, looked up toward the sky, and wondered if her mother had been up there all along, just waiting for Elaine to figure the whole thing out.

  Marion had told Jo there were two sides to every story. Now Jo had heard Andrew’s.

  It would have been better, of course, if it hadn’t sounded so innocent: a lonely man who’d given up a huge career and a well-connected lifestyle to give his daughter balance; a man who’d seen the chance to write the column as a chance to touch the world’s periphery in a harmless way. A man who’d been dumped by his wife, who had nursed his wounds, who had never set out with malicious intent.

  Andrew was not Brian. Maybe, like her father, maybe like her grandfather, he’d made a bad choice, but he was not Brian. All he had taken from her was a bit of her pride.

  In return, Jo had ended up—they had all ended up—with what promised to be a wonderful business. And feelings for a man that she hadn’t expected.

  After her guests were gone, Jo got into her car and sat there a moment. The roads would be deserted on Thanksgiving night: most families would be home now, where it was warm, where love was safe.

  Leaning across the seat, Jo reached into the glove box. She took out the picture of her father and the silver chain. She touched her father’s gentle face, then moved her hand to the charm of the oak tree, with roots that ran so deep. She held it up to the moonlight, slipped it over her head, and let its coolness rest quietly, close to her heart.

  She looked back to her father’s picture, then she checked her watch. She wondered if there still was time, or if Andrew had already left.

  45

  Honey, are you sure?”

  Cassie had been waiting when Andrew came back from Jo’s, came back from Elaine’s. Cassie had been waiting, but Patty hadn’t arrived.

  “She’s not coming,” Cassie said. “And I’m not going.”

  It was a good time to build a fire in the stone fireplace, to break apart a few twigs, to crumple some old newspaper sheets. Andrew wasn’t sure how much more emotion he could pack into one afternoon. He opened the kindling box and got to work.

  “What happened?” he asked, arranging the pieces on the wrought-iron grate as if he’d been a Boy Scout, not a city kid, as if he’d ever gone camping, which he had not.

  “She didn’t really want me, Dad. The way I figure it, she just didn’t want you to have me.”

  He crouched in front of the fireplace. “Oh, honey,” he said, striking a match, then yanking open the flue because it seemed better to direct his anger there than at his self-centered ex-wife. “Why do you feel that way?”

  His daughter shrugged. “A lot of the kids in my class have parents who are divorced. Custody fights are usually about the parents, not the kids.”

  He thought for a moment. He fanned the fire; he added a log. He stood up and surveyed his not-half-bad job. Then he went over to Cassie and sat down next to her. “I hate that you have to go through this,” he said, because it was the truth, and Andrew was now committed to telling the truth. He put his arm around her. He ruffled her hair. Then he asked, “What changed your mind?”

  “She called and said, ‘I decided to check before I came all the way up there. Are you coming?’ I said, ‘I don’t think so,’ and she asked me why, and I said I didn’t want to leave you.”

  He tried not to smile, but he couldn’t help himself. “And then she said?”

  “And then she said, ‘Well, be that way, then.’ And she said that you’d better let her know far in advance if you plan to bring me out there in the summer.”

  He nodded. “You’re okay with this?”

  “Yes, Dad. For sure.”

  The applewood crackled; little orange flames licked one another. “What if I said I had planned to go with you?”

  Cassie laughed. “I know you did, Dad. When I came home from Mrs. Connor’s, I came into the living room. I saw your suitcase sticking out from under the far end of the couch. That’s when I decided. I know you love Jo. You went to her house and told her about all the lies, didn’t you?”

  He closed his eyes. Then he laughed, too. “You are too smart for a child of mine.”

  “Come on, Dad, you didn’t want to go Australia, any more than I did. I decided it was more important to stay here. And see what happens.”

  He watched the fire again; he counted his blessings, or at least the most important one, who sat next to him. “So you’re okay without a mother?”

  “Sure, Dad. I’m okay for now.”

  They sat by the fire, just sitting, not talking. Then the doorbell rang, surprising them both.

  “Andrew.”

  “Jo.”

  She stood on the back steps in the dusk, the tall, black fingers of leafless maples and oaks framing the backdrop against the gunmetal sky. “You’re still here.”

  He pressed his teeth against his bottom lip, the way she had done earlier. “Yes. We’re not going.”

  “Oh.”

  He couldn’t imagine why she was there. He couldn’t imagine why the two of them stood there, not speaking, as if someone had pushed the mute button on the remote. “Would you like to come in?” he finally asked. “I built a fire.” He said it as if he’d built it for her. “Please,” he added. “It’s cold out.”

  But Jo shook her head. “No. I only wanted to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything that’s happened. I’m sorry I wasn’t nicer to you.”

  At another time, he might have laughed at the off-the-wall idea that she—not he—had been the one who’d screwed up. But Andrew didn’t laugh, he lowered his voice. “You were nicer to me than I deserved. Please. Won’t you come in? Cassie would love to see you . . .” Cassie again. He must stop using her as a shield for his feelings, an excuse for his fear of getting too close.

  But Jo didn’t answer. Instead, she reached up and pressed her palm to his cheek. “Andrew,” she said, almost in a whisper, “will you come back to work?”

  He held his breath. Even in the gray light, he could see her green, green eyes. “But the wedding . . . the media . . .” He said it because he didn’t know what else to say, because what he really wanted was to take her in his arms and hold her and kiss her and smell the scent in her hair and taste the sweetness on her tongue.

  She paused; she held her eyes on him, her hand on his face. “We’ll sequester you in the kitchen. If that’s how you want it.”

&nb
sp; Her fingers were fire on his skin. Or was it his cheek that was fire on her hand? “You’d harbor a fugitive? From what, the paparazzi?”

  “Please,” she repeated. Her hand slid from his face; she folded her arms. She turned her head sideways, toward the backyard, toward his small pumpkin patch. Then she began to cry. “I was so afraid that you’d gone.”

  “Jo,” he said, stepping forward.

  Before he could embrace her, she held up her hand and whisked off her tears and said, “We’ll talk again, after the wedding. Right now, we need you.” She paused, then looked at him again. “I need you,” she said.

  Then she slipped away and she was back in her car and had backed down the driveway before Andrew realized what had happened, that he’d been forgiven, that she had come to him.

  On the drive back to her mother’s house—back to her house—Jo brushed the tears from the edges of her smile. She wondered how it had happened that she’d was learning to trust, and she wondered if love would come next.

  Epilogue

  They stood on the terrace outside the ballroom of The Stone Castle, watching the magnificent silver-and-white fireworks that lit up the night sky. Lily, Sarah, Jo, and Elaine were tired but happy, validated by success.

  John and Irene had been properly remarried without the slightest hitch; the media was heralding the women as the long-awaited experts on second weddings. The menu, the décor, the bagpipers, the dramatic White Chocolate Lace Bridal Veil—the press was gifted with abundant stories to bring Second Chances to the forefront, as Andrew had planned it.

  “We wouldn’t be in business if it weren’t for Andrew,” Sarah said. “We’d have closed up our storefront months ago.”

  “Instead we’re expanding,” Lily added. Frank had offered them the space his antiques shop was in, because the town fathers (and the mothers) had finally approved construction for a new town hall, and he had bought the old one for his growing business.