by Selena Kitt
Who else but her sister would have gone out of her way to track down Leah’s roommates from Magdalene House, the girls Leah had spent those long, anxious months with, four girls who really knew how Leah felt losing Grace? They were all here snoring on the bedroom floor, thanks to her best friend—her sister, her twin.
Beside her, Erica stretched and yawned. “I can’t believe it’s raining on your wedding day. I ordered sunshine, damn it.”
“I can’t believe you’re my sister,” Leah whispered, snuggling up and spooning her. Erica hugged Leah’s arm over her middle, a sweet, familiar gesture, one that was so comfortable, Leah wondered if they had slept this way in the womb. “My real sister.”
“I know.” Erica smiled, eyes still closed. She had taken the news far better than Leah thought she would, accepting the fact they were fraternal twins without a beat. Her only question had been, “Do I have to call Patty ‘Mom’?”
Leah hadn’t told her mother yet they knew, that Rob had revealed her secret.
“I can’t believe you’re marrying the guy I always thought of as my dad.”
Leah giggled. “I can’t believe I’m marrying the guy I always thought of as your dad either.”
She really couldn’t believe it. Today was her wedding day.
The sound of a baby crying startled her before she remembered Marty’s baby was sleeping next to his mother, sweet little Gregory Adam Walker, a name Leah didn’t have much trouble with, since she had it on a postcard tucked into the mirror over her dresser. She was having a much harder time with the names of her former Magdalene House roommates however. Marty was Maureen, which wasn’t too much of a stretch, but Lizzie was really Carolyn and Jean was Norma and she never remembered to call Frannie Marguerite. All of them kept calling Leah by her fake Magdalene House name too, and Erica laughed hearing her called “Lily” all the time. They’d finally just given up and stuck to the names they knew each other by.
Leah looked over at Marty nursing her baby. She was still half asleep, on her side, the baby pulled to her, suckling happily, instantly quieted. Leah realized with a sick feeling in her middle that even if baby Grace came home today, she wouldn’t be able to nurse her. They had bound her breasts and given her an injection to dry up her milk.
“Are you ready to be Mrs. Robert Nolan?” Erica whispered, making Leah smile at the words.
“More than ready.”
She couldn’t believe how fast it had all come together. The lawyer had told them to get married as soon as possible, and she had cried in Rob’s arms at the loss of a big church wedding. She was willing to make the sacrifice for Grace’s sake, of course, but it still broke her heart to give up her adolescent dream of the white dress and the flowers and the bridal dance.
Rob had held her and whispered, “Okay, if it’s a big wedding you want, it’s a big wedding you’ll have.”
And then he had moved heaven and earth to make it happen. He and Erica had put their heads together, taken Leah’s list of wedding wishes, and had taken charge of everything. Leah picked out the dress, the invitations, the flowers, her bridesmaids dresses. She picked the cake, the menu and their reception venue. But she had no idea how they had managed to make any of that possible on such short notice.
Erica yawned and stretched again, sitting up and slapping the bed, announcing, “Let’s get this show on the road!”
All the girls groaned, pulling various pillows or blankets over their heads after their late night, but Erica wasn’t having it.
“C’mon, troops! Ten-hut!” Erica hopped over Leah, landing on the floor in bare feet, grabbing blankets and sleeping bags, rolling girls out of their comfy hideaways.
“Okay, Sergeant, you rally the troops while I go take a shower.” Leah giggled, threading her way through limbs and torsos, waving to her former roommates, all of them protesting. But they were smiling.
Leah was smiling too. She couldn’t help it. She smiled all the way through her shower, shampooing her hair twice, shaving her legs—and between them too—wondering if she would ever have a better day than this one in her whole life. The day Grace was born, of course.
And the day she comes home.
Even the thought of Grace couldn’t keep Leah from smiling as she came out of the bathroom to find the weather had cooperated with Erica’s orders, and the sun had appeared, making a rainbow in the sky the girls were standing in the living room exclaiming over as they looked at it through the skylights.
“It’s the best luck in the world for a bride to have a rainbow on her wedding day.” Leah’s mother smiled over a cup of coffee.
Leah smiled back, joining the gaggle of girls in goggling at the refracted light show, thinking her mother was right. Today, she was the luckiest girl in the world.
“I don’t think there’ve been this many white people on Linwood street since the riots,” Erica whispered, peeking out the door.
“Erica!” Leah’s mother gasped, but she was laughing, pulling her back into the room.
“Erica, don’t start,” Leah called from where she sat, surrounded by her bridesmaids, thanks to her best friend and sister, waiting anxiously for it to be time to walk down the aisle. They were all so beautiful in their brown satin empire waist dresses with the pink satin sashes and their brown pillbox hats.
Marty fluffed her veil while Frannie retouched Leah’s lipstick. Lizzie was sitting on the floor, flipping through the baby book—Leah’s mother had brought it to put on the cake table for people to look at—and Jean sat beside her. It reminded her so much of the time they’d all spent upstairs in the turret room at Magdalene House, it made Leah’s eyes well up with tears.
“Oh no you don’t,” Frannie murmured, giving her a look of disapproval. “No crying! You’ll run your mascara!”
“Here, I’ve got one,” Marty clucked, opening her pocketbook and digging out a tissue.
Frannie grabbed it, touching just the corner of the Kleenex to the corner of Leah’s eye, letting it wick away the wetness.
“Nice technique,” Erica said, looking at Frannie with approval.
“Were you being naughty?” Leah blinked, frowning at her sister.
“They didn’t hear me.” Erica grinned. “Well, Clay saw me, but he just waved. He looks awfully dreamy in a suit.”
“You’re going to be making a trip like this down the aisle before you know it if you’re not careful,” Leah’s mother remarked, joining the group of girls.
“Oh no, not me.” Erica shook her head. “I’m going to move to California and become a news anchor.”
Patty Wendt raised her eyebrows, but she was smiling. “You really are my daughter, aren’t you?”
Leah met her mother’s eyes in the mirror, so proud of how well she’d taken the news that Erica had accidentally let slip just a few hours before, while they were all in the kitchen fighting access to the coffee percolator. Patty Wendt had taken it in stride, taking Erica by the arm and leading her out of the kitchen. They had disappeared up to the loft for an hour and Leah didn’t know what the two of them said to each other, but they both came down dabbing their eyes with Kleenex and laughing, so it couldn’t have been too bad.
“Oh, I almost forgot your something old.” Leah’s mother opened her pocketbook, looking through it. “And no, it’s isn’t me!”
The girls laughed and then gasped when she pulled out a small box, opening it to reveal two pearl earrings.
“Oh, Mom...” Leah gaped at her as Patty clipped them to her ears. She’d never been allowed to get them pierced.
“They were your grandmother’s.” Patty stepped back, cocking her head, and smiling. “You’re the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen.”
“I went to the bank and got your something new.” Erica stepped forward, holding out a shiny copper penny in her palm. “1958. You can put it in your shoe.”
Leah gathered up the fabric of her dress, lifting her foot so Erica could slide the penny into her white satin shoe.
“Keep your ski
rt up, girlie.” Frannie grinned, producing a white garter with a blue satin bow. “Here’s your something blue.”
Leah blushed and they all laughed as Frannie slid it up her calf. Leah took hold of it and slid it the rest of the way up her thigh. “I guess all I need now is—”
“Something borrowed,” Marty said. “Since it’s supposed to be from someone who’s in a happy, stable marriage, I was elected.”
“I’m so glad you’re happy,” she breathed as Marty touched her cheek to Leah’s, pressing her ‘something borrowed’ into Leah’s hand.
“This is for your happy tears,” Marty whispered back.
Leah looked down at the handkerchief monogrammed with her friend’s initials and felt her eyes tearing up again.
“Noooo!” Frannie protested. “No crying until after the pictures!”
The door opened and a dark face peeked in. It was the pastor’s daughter—Aretha—the one Erica had arranged to sing after the exchange of vows.
“It’s time,” she called, smiling at all of them standing there. “Time to get married!”
The girls gathered around Leah, already squealing and giggling in anticipation, gathering their bouquets of pale pink and white roses and handing over Leah’s. Hers was double in size, and all her roses were a light blush, the palest pink.
“Ready?” Leah’s mother asked, taking her daughter’s arm.
“You look beautiful, Mom,” Leah whispered. It wasn’t the blush-colored mother-of-the bride dress she was wearing, it was the smile on her face, the sparkle in her mother’s eyes. She’d never seen her look so light or free. The secret her mother had been carrying hadn’t just hardened her, it had dimmed her, but now that she’d opened up about it, something about Patty Wendt absolutely shined.
Erica looked at their mother, cocking her head and smiling. “You do, Mom.”
“So do you, girls.” Patty Wendt started blinking fast, tilting her head back. “Oh no, not the waterworks!”
Leah came to the rescue and handed over Marty’s borrowed handkerchief to Erica, who wiped away their mother’s happy tears as the girls all lined up, the music already filling the church. Leah smiled at her mother as she took the handkerchief back, keeping it in her hand, hidden by her bouquet.
She had a feeling she was going to need it.
Leah thought she couldn’t top the moment when Erica called Patty “Mom,” just before Leah took her mother’s arm and walked down the aisle.
But then she saw the look on Rob’s face when he first glimpsed her in her wedding dress, the pride and love there shining like a light meant just for her, and she was sure then nothing could get better than that.
Until the moment Father Michael pronounced them husband and wife, and Rob lifted her veil and gathered her up and kissed her as the dark angel behind them broke into glorious song and she thought she’d never felt so beautiful, had never heard anything so beautiful, would never in her life experience anything this beautiful again.
But if her wedding day had been the most delightful, enchanting day of her life, like walking into the pages of a fairy tale, her honeymoon surpassed it by light years. Her wedding had taken place on the planet Earth, and while she felt as if she were floating through the day like an angel or a goddess, there had been reminders of everyday life to keep her at least a little grounded.
Every day things like exchanging addresses and phone numbers with all her bridesmaids, knowing she wouldn’t see them again for a long time. Things like meeting Marty’s tall, tanned, real-cowboy husband, who shook her hand in the receiving line and said, “Congratulations to you and your bloke, Sheila,” and Leah had been too embarrassed to correct him on getting her name wrong, and thank goodness she had been, because Marty explained later while they dancing to Chubby Checker’s Twist, that her husband had just been using an Australian term of endearment.
She had glimpsed Ada crying through the ceremony while Solie handed her Kleenex out of the depths of her considerable cleavage, like an endless scarf-pulling magic trick, using the space between her voluminous breasts as a tissue dispenser for Ada on one side of her and Leah’s mother on the other. Between the three of them they cried a happy river of tears.
Leah saw Erica dancing with the Clayton boy, her blond head resting on his shoulder, eyes closed, and she wondered how long it would be before they were doing this again for her, in spite of Erica protests about running off into the big, wide world and becoming a journalist. Erica had, after all, caught the bouquet.
All of those things kept pulling Leah back down to earth throughout the day and into the evening as their guests ate dinner and drank champagne and toasted the happy couple and rapped on their glasses with their knives so often Leah thought her lips would get chapped from the kisses initiated by that long-standing tradition. Not that she minded kissing Rob. Not at all.
By the time she’d changed into her brown pinstriped going-away outfit, she was more than ready for her honeymoon to begin. The long stares Rob had been giving her all night, the dark, wolfish look in his eyes, had made her knees wobbly and her belly a roiling sea of emotion. She hardly ate anything, too distracted, and anyway, fairy tale creatures didn’t need human sustenance, did they?
Leah kissed all her bridesmaids goodbye and hugged her sister the tightest, thanking her for everything, everything, and Erica kissed her cheek and promised to take care of everything while they were gone, not to worry, she had it under control. Leah’s mother hugged them both, the three of them a trio of wet eyes and smudged mascara when they parted.
And she cried again when Marty handed over little Gregory and she held him close, watching him make sucking motions in his sleep, her tears falling onto the soft blue blanket his mother had swaddled him in. Marty promised to write and urged Leah to call her, not if but when, baby Grace was back in her mother’s empty, aching arms.
The honeymoon started in the limo on the way over to the hotel. Rob had booked a room overnight in the Fort Shelby—their flight to the Caribbean didn’t leave until the morning—and the two of them made out like teenagers in the back of the Rolls-Royce Phantom in spite of the driver being able to glance in the rear view mirror and see them. That just made it all the more exciting.
“I can’t wait to get you out of these clothes,” Rob whispered into her ear, his hand moving up under her skirt, stroking the exposed expanse of skin on her thigh above her stocking. “You’re mine, sweetheart. All mine.”
“Yes,” she breathed, squirming on the seat, arms twined around her neck, breath coming so fast she thought she might faint. “Always.”
She could barely believe it was true. Leah heard the man behind the concierge desk in the Fort Shelby address them as Mr. and Mrs. Nolan with a sense of wonder and awe. The bellhop brought up their luggage, taking them down the hallway to their room. Rob tipped him and the bellboy tipped his hat and grinned, handing over the key and thanking him before heading back down the hall.
Leah remembered staying at Fort Shelby during their annual end of the school year trip to Detroit’s local amusement parks. They had run around like little kids, she and Erica, so young and carefree. Leah had been head over heels in love with Rob and neither of them could deny it anymore, in spite of Erica’s misgivings about the relationship. He had proposed to her the same weekend, and she thought they were going to live happily ever after, that she finally had the fairy tale.
So much time and heartache between then and now, so many losses, so much sacrifice. But none of it mattered when Rob unlocked the door to the honeymoon suite, sweeping her off her feet and carrying her over the threshold, nudging their suitcases in and kicking the door closed behind him. She laughed, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing his cheek, leaving a visible lipstick print.
“What should we do first?” Leah pondered aloud when he set her on the bed. She leaned back, kicking off her high heels. “Take a shower? Watch TV? Order room service?”
Rob crawled onto the bed, onto her, making her lean back o
n the pillow. “The first thing I’m doing is getting you out of these clothes and making love to my wife.”
“Your wife,” Leah repeated, trying it on for size.
“My wife.”
“I like the sound of that,” she whispered.
“So do I.”