Wicked River

by Jenny Milchman

  Most of Doug’s boyhood crop of friends had also dispersed, but the two who remained in the city, Mark and Brett, got drinks or ate lunch with Doug fairly regularly. Natalie was glad she had at least matched her fiancé’s set of groomsmen. It would have been all too easy to have nobody standing up there besides her sister, an uncomfortable reminder of the way her own friendships had disintegrated.

  A rap on the door and Claudia reentered, Natalie’s wedding gown in its plastic sheath slung over her arm.

  “Doug’s mother just arrived,” she announced. “I helped unload her bags and showed her where her room was on the map.” This last said with just a touch of perplexity—helplessness puzzled Claudia. She added, “She seems to like the inn.”

  Natalie gave her sister a smile that felt a trifle wistful. “I was hoping she might come over here to say hello. You know, before the ceremony.”

  “I’m sure she will,” Claudia replied briskly. Problem presented, solution imposed—that was Claudia’s way. Often, she even had the power to enact said solution. Only not in this case. “Give her a few moments to settle in.”

  When Natalie first met Doug, she had hoped that she and his mom might become close. In Natalie’s view, almost any mother who was still alive held that warm, thriving potential. But Gail Larson seemed too overwhelmed by life to have much to offer anybody else, and this extended to her own son. She puttered around her overlarge apartment—three bedrooms in New York City!—assisted by a phalanx of friends, several of whom had been invited to the wedding.

  The woman doing Natalie’s nails reinserted her bronze-coated brush into its bottle and dabbed on a clear top coat. Then she stood up, waggling a finger in Claudia’s direction. “Don’t come anywhere near her with that dress for at least thirty minutes, you hear?”

  “We’ll just chitchat till she’s dry,” Claudia agreed, setting a timer on her phone.

  When it chimed a half hour later, Claudia helped Natalie into her dress, shimmying the ivory silk down over Natalie’s hips, then sucking in a breath.

  “Oh my goodness,” she said. “Will you just take a look at you. My baby sister, who could believe it?” And she rotated Natalie toward the mirror.

  Natalie was surprised to feel a pinprick of tears. Claudia flew across the room for tissues, dabbing carefully at Natalie’s eyes to avoid smudging the color on her lids.

  “I know you must miss Mom,” Claudia said. “Especially today.”

  Natalie gazed at herself in the glass, trying to conjure the face she’d stared at so many times in her parents’ wedding portraits.

  “I wish I missed her,” she whispered. “I don’t even have that.”

  Claudia adjusted the silken threads that held the dress up until they formed a rippling line across each of Natalie’s shoulders, then walked her around the bridal suite so Natalie could get a feel for her shoes and the long sweep of her dress. As they passed the bank of windows, Claudia halted abruptly enough that Natalie’s toes bit the hem of her gown. Claudia steadied her, then crouched down to peer outside.

  “Natalie,” she said, her voice sharp. “What are those guys doing?”

  Chapter Two

  Natalie and Doug had chosen the Blooming Garden Inn in upstate New York because its idyllic, pastoral setting seemed the stuff of wedding dreams. The bridal suite occupied a wing of the Victorian structure, painted sage, adorned by violet shutters. The suite had its own separate entrance looking out over the wildflower meadow where the ceremony would take place.

  Standing beside her sister, Natalie bent down too, and looked.

  At the end of the winding stone walk that led away from the suite, white wooden chairs had been set up. None of the rows were filled yet, but it was still a bit early, plus Natalie and Doug had known that their wedding would be on the small side. Both of their family trees were so fractured, with breaks and jogs along the lines. It was another of the things that bound them together.

  “Are those Doug’s groomsmen?” Claudia asked, sounding slightly annoyed. She leaned closer to the window. “They’re going to be late.”

  Beyond the meadow lay an empty field, which marked the boundary between the inn’s property and the road running alongside. And standing in the midst of that field were two men who from this vantage point did look a lot like Doug’s best friends.

  Natalie twisted to look at her sister over her shoulder, feeling the glide of ivory silk against her. “Why would they just be standing around over there?”

  “They’re not even dressed,” Claudia replied, still with that tinge of annoyance. Her sister didn’t like unexpected disruptions or changes in plan.

  “And I don’t think they’re just ‘standing around,’” Claudia added. “It looks like they’re upset about something.”

  Natalie dropped to her knees to get a better look through the glass, her skirt forming a puddle of silk on the floor.

  “Let me go see what’s happening,” Claudia proposed, straightening up from the window.

  But Natalie was the one getting married, growing up in some sense after today. She gave a quick shake of her head. “I’ll do it.”

  “Natalie!” Claudia burst out. “You can’t go out there like that.”

  Natalie began heading for the door that opened onto the meadow. “It’s early. No one’s even seated yet.”

  Except for the musicians. Standing in the doorway, Natalie could see them unfolding chairs and propping sheet music on metal stands, an elderly foursome that she and Doug had had constant trouble working with. They didn’t even return texts. Natalie hoped they wouldn’t be as clueless when it came to the program she and Doug had put together. Natalie had wanted music playing while the guests began to gather, and during rehearsal, the quartet seemed uncertain about the right time to start.

  Natalie took a step outdoors, Claudia behind her, still protesting.

  Mellow afternoon light lay over the grounds. Natalie and Doug had decided to forego an evening ceremony because they wanted to get an early start the next morning. Well, Doug did anyway. He’d given Natalie a bunch of details about the route they’d be taking and why leaving first thing mattered. When Natalie suggested pushing their honeymoon back a day—the idea of twenty-four unscheduled hours to lounge around the inn alone together feeling like the height of luxury—Doug had balked, saying that honeymoons always started the day after the wedding. Natalie wasn’t sure if that was Doug sticking to time-honed ritual again, or if he was just eager to get going. Their honeymoon destination had been his idea after all.

  A trellised gazebo stood in the midst of the meadow, awaiting the moment when Natalie and Doug would say their vows. Was Doug inside it already? Flowers draped the entrance, making it hard to see. An aisle had been mown between the tall, waving meadow grasses, and Natalie’s father stood at one end, shifting from foot to foot as if he wasn’t quite clear about his role in all this. None of the other members of the wedding party had come down from the inn yet.

  Claudia shielded her eyes, squinting. “That’s definitely them.”

  Sunlight shone right into Natalie’s face, and she could hardly see. She visored her eyes, moving closer. Mark and Brett presented an odd sight, huddled together, wearing shorts and ratty tees. Natalie supposed men didn’t need as much time to get ready, but this was cutting it close even so.

  The two did appear to be arguing, their mouths open as they gesticulated with their hands, although their voices weren’t loud enough to carry.

  Doug emerged from the gazebo, squinting out at the field, and Natalie’s heart leapt inside her. Her fiancé looked so stunningly handsome in his wedding garb—linen pants and a broadcloth coat, a single rosebud at his breast—that the sight momentarily distracted her from whatever might be taking place in the field.

  Doug began to cross the meadow, tall flowers tickling at his legs. It could’ve been a photo shoot in a magazine, except for the
expression of anger plastered across her fiancé’s face. He joined his friends in the adjacent field while Natalie took another step toward it. All three guys became embroiled in discussion, Doug’s gestures also effusive. One of his hands was balled into a fist, the other raised and out-turned as if in protest.

  Protest over what? Claudia was still trailing her, and Natalie shot her sister a brief look of confusion before hurrying forward on her own.

  Mark withdrew a phone from his pocket and swiped his thumb across the screen, frowning. He shook the device as he walked in a circle, holding it up toward the sky.

  Cell signal was spotty in this little country town. It would be nonexistent where Natalie and Doug were headed on their honeymoon tomorrow.

  All three guys turned around at the same time to face the road. It lay, one lane and spooling, barricaded on its opposite side by a thin strip of forest. A dark, late-model sedan came gliding along the asphalt, like a shark slicing through the gray-black sea.

  Natalie picked up her skirts, fighting to close the distance between herself and Doug.

  Her fiancé’s voice became audible. “No way. Not now.”

  A few early guests must have emerged and caught sight of Natalie; from behind she could hear whispered oohs and aahs gathering force like a wind. She felt her freshly manicured nails dig into her palms as her hands formed panicked fists.

  Natalie hurried past the last of the prettily arrayed chairs and into the field, her path sending her across a portion of aisle.

  The string quartet launched into the preamble Natalie and Doug had selected to play before the processional began. Natalie knew they should have hired someone else. Notes from Beethoven’s Ninth soared toward a cloudless blue lid of sky. Triggered by the strains of music, Natalie’s father raised his head and took a few halting steps.

  Claudia went running over, stretching out an arm to stop their dad, whose glossy shoes caught a loose clod of earth. He tripped, righting himself as he looked around for Natalie in the dazzling sunlight. Claudia dashed forward, holding up her dress, and signaling the musicians to stop with a guillotine motion to her neck.

  The instruments abruptly cut off.

  Mark and Brett and Doug all looked up at once with identical expressions on their faces. As if they’d been suddenly jarred out of whatever had been preoccupying them, jolted back to the here and now. They grew flustered, brushing at their clothes, edging sideways until they were out of sight of Natalie’s father, the musicians, and whichever guests had begun to assemble.

  At a distance, Natalie followed their progress across the field.

  Mark began shaking his phone as if a small animal had latched itself onto his hand. He swiped at the screen, a goggle of dismay distorting his features.

  Natalie’s skirts tangled, and she came to a stop.

  The thunk of twin car doors could be heard from the road. Two men emerged from the vehicle, dressed in cheap, slick suits and square-toed boots, which chewed up the field as the men began crossing it.

  Mark and Brett exchanged looks, while Doug gave them a merciless glare.

  The two men were heading straight for them. One was brick-faced with sullen features, mottled, ruddy skin, and an elongated head. The other seemed to have a handicap. The heel on his left boot was a good three inches higher than the one on the right, and he walked with a plodding, relentless hitch in his step. The first man broke into a jog as his friend struggled to keep up.

  “Mark—” Doug warned. He didn’t appear to have noticed Natalie, now standing a little ways behind him.

  His groomsmen pivoted in the direction of the two men, leaving the bower of blossoms, partially trod-upon aisle, and thankfully still-empty chairs. Mark and Brett walked casually toward the road, at a slightly faster clip than a stroll. When they reached the men in a broad sweep of grass, Mark and Brett sandwiched the pair, guiding them away from where the festivities were set to begin.

  Natalie spun in place, fighting to understand what had just happened.

  Claudia could be heard shushing their father: “I don’t know, Dad. I’ll find out.”

  Doug headed back toward the gazebo, the look on his face the antithesis of a party: a poisonous brew of knit eyebrows and carved-out hollows in his cheeks forged by clenching his jaw.

  Natalie reached out to him. “Doug?”

  He looked surprised to see her there, his vision clouded.

  Then his face folded. “Did you see those screwups?” he asked, voice so low and thunderous that Natalie had trouble making out what he’d said. “They ruined our day—”

  “Doug, no!” Natalie interrupted. She felt a flicker of fear. Things couldn’t be ruined as easily as that. It didn’t matter who those men were, or what connection they had to Mark and Brett. Anything like that was peripheral, outside the confines of the union she and Doug were about to enter into. Natalie took her fiancé’s face between her hands. His cheeks felt heated, fiery. “No,” she repeated. “It’s going to be perfect.”

  Doug looked down, as if only now truly parsing her presence.

  “All that matters is us,” Natalie whispered, holding his gaze.

  Gone were the music, those men, the guests who would soon be getting situated in their seats. Natalie’s sister, just itching to fix whatever had happened, and their father, ambling about and bewildered. Nothing and nobody existed except for Natalie and Doug. Amber late-day light shone down, enveloping them in their own golden halo.

  Natalie rose on tiptoes, unsteady in her heels, and Doug caught her, one arm upon the small of her back, strong enough to keep her from falling.

  Then he learned over, just an inch or two, and they looked into each other’s eyes. Natalie had to blink from the sheer overwhelm of their stare. Passion had always been a spark in dry grass between them, instantaneously ignited. Yearning, reaching, Natalie made up the difference between their two bodies until she could brush Doug’s mouth with her own. It was fevered like the rest of him, and tasted of anger.

  Doug caught her lips between his own, kissing back hard, biting her almost. Natalie moaned, the sound lost to all the space around them. She drank Doug in, a bloodletting only she could absorb. Doug pulled her closer, flattening her breasts against his broad chest until Natalie could no longer tell where he ended and she began.

  There was a stirring from behind, and dazed, Natalie and Doug parted.

  The pastor hurried toward them.

  “Hey, I think you folks might be jumping the gun,” he said, settling himself into place at the gazebo and straightening his tie. “The wedding hasn’t even started yet.”

  Chapter Three

  best wedding kiss ever Mia texted after the long, boring ceremony was finally over. She looked down in frustration at the line that stopped halfway across the screen. Five words appeared: Message could not be delivered.

  She bit her lip, and felt her annoyance ease a little. Mia’s braces had just been taken off last week—she’d begged the ortho to make sure it happened in time for her aunt’s wedding—and the silky feel of her teeth amazed her every time.

  Mia stuffed her useless phone into the clutch her mother had loaned her. Aunt Nat and Uncle Doug were running back down the aisle, a shower of rose petals tossed at their heads. Mia got up and reached into the basket placed at the end of each row of seats so that she could throw a handful. A breeze lifted the velvet scallops and scattered them across the grass. Pretty. Mia decided to do the same thing if she ever got married.

  What were you supposed to do at a wedding after the wedding part ended? Eat, of course, and dance, but neither seemed to be an option just yet. If her dad were here, she’d at least have someone to talk to, but again, not an option. Mia decided to go in search of her mother and grandfather.

  They were nowhere to be found. Not standing in the field with the other clumps of guests, or near the little structure where the ceremony too
k place. Mia figured her grandfather must’ve had some need he couldn’t figure out on his own—maybe he wanted a drink, or a phone that actually worked—and her mom was attending to it. That was kind of her mom’s way, taking care of everything for everybody, whether they wanted her to or not. Although there were plenty of drinks right here, Mia observed, as she wandered around in the bright sunshine. A waiter passed by, tray held high above his shoulder, and Mia reached for a glass of champagne.

  The waiter looked down as she took it. “You of age?”

  He looked pretty young himself. Cute too. “Everybody’s of age today, cowboy,” Mia replied, then danced off with the glass tipping in her hand.

  She decided to go ditch her phone. If she had it on her, she would only try to use it, and that was a losing battle. Guests looked down and smiled as Mia tripped past. Her borrowed shoes weren’t easy to walk in. Mia didn’t recognize any of these people, and still couldn’t find a member of her family. Actually, she thought she saw one person who might be related—distantly—in part because he saw fit to snatch the nearly full glass out of her hand. Mia didn’t really care. Champagne tasted sour, plus she was already feeling a little fuzzy in the head.

  After making a quick pit stop at her room, Mia came back out of the hotel and finally spotted her aunt and uncle. They were standing beside a tree with leaves partially cloaking them, kissing in a way that made Mia’s cheeks burn. She looked away, and when she took a second glance, they had stepped deeper in between the branches, although they could still be overheard.

  “Are we going to talk about what happened?” Aunt Nat asked.

  Silence, until Mia wondered if they were kissing again, but then Uncle Doug spoke. “You don’t have to worry about it. Call it a blast from the past.”

  Mia crept closer to the tree.