by Grace Palmer
“Oh, of course! How are you, darling?”
Mae heard the woman draw in a short breath and sigh. “I’m afraid I have some extremely unfortunate news. My husband fell down the stairs this morning and broke his leg. We’re at the hospital right now getting checked out, and everything seems as though it will be okay, but the long and short of it is that he won’t be able to do the ceremony this afternoon.”
Mae’s jaw dropped. “Oh my goodness gracious.”
“I know that’s terrible news for you, but—”
“No, no!” Mae interrupted, gnawing at her lip. “My thoughts and prayers are with your husband! We’ll be okay. Don’t you worry about us. You just tell him to worry about himself. The two of you have always been very good to our family.”
She could hear Mrs. Murphy smile and relax. “I’ll tell him. Thank you for understanding.”
The woman said their goodbyes and hung up. As soon as the call was done, Mae slumped over immediately.
What a horrible break this was! Everything had been shaping up so nicely. But nothing in this world could come off without a hitch, or so it seemed to be with the Benson tribe.
The question now was: what was she supposed to do to fix this?
Striding down the walkway at that moment was Dominic. He was whistling softly, but the wind carried it towards Mae so that it was as if he were standing right next to her. As floored as she was by the news about Father Murphy, she couldn’t help but take a moment to admire how dapper Dominic looked in his suit. It was a dark gray number, under which he wore a crisp white shirt and a pale purple tie that matched Mae’s dress perfectly. He’d even put on real shoes for the occasion, though Mae had caught him looking longingly at his house slippers when they were getting ready to leave the house that morning.
She was still a bit upset with him. The two of them would have a great deal of very serious talking to do once all the hectic events of this weekend had vanished in the rear-view mirror. The thought of more secrets hiding in the corners of his past life didn’t sit well with her. She wanted him to be open with her; it was the only way for their relationship to survive. But their silent reconciliation last night had softened her heart a degree or two.
Perhaps Saoirse was right. Maybe Dominic was truly the saddest man alive. But Mae couldn’t help but think that, when they were together, she helped take some small sliver of that sadness away from him. That thought made her happy, because he did the same thing for her. He made her feel like moving forward was possible. All she had to do was reach out and take hold of her future.
Dominic smiled as he neared her, hands in pockets. It wasn’t until he got a few steps away that he saw the crestfallen expression on her face and realized that something had gone amiss.
“What is troubling you, my dear?” he asked.
“We don’t have a priest,” she blurted at once, then quickly explained what had happened.
Dominic’s eyes widened. “That is unwelcome news indeed.”
Then he fell silent, but in a weird way, like he was searching himself for something. His gaze shifted towards his feet. For some reason, Mae felt a little bit cross at that.
“There isn’t a priest hiding under the sand, darling,” she snapped.
Dominic raised his gaze back up to hers and cleared his throat. “I … I may have a solution.”
There was that faraway look in his face again. Did he truly have more secrets already? What could possibly be so intimidating that he couldn’t say it right away?
“Well? I’m all ears, love.” Her words were nice, but she didn’t feel very nice at all.
He cleared his throat again, clasped his hands behind his back, shuffled his shoes nervously on the slats of the boardwalk.
“Dominic.”
He sighed. “Saoirse is licensed.”
“Licensed? What does that even—oh.” Realization hit Mae like a pile of bricks. “You don’t mean … oh no.”
She hadn’t meant to say the last part out loud, but it had slipped between her lips before she could catch it.
Their talk on the beach had gone a long way towards dissipating some of the enmity that hung between the two women. But the truth of the matter was that Saoirse was largely an unwelcome presence in Mae’s world. Before her arrival, life had been simple and sweet, easy and good. But she’d come barging in like a boat going too fast in a no-wake zone, stirring up all kinds of muck and nonsense that would’ve been better off lying undisturbed on the seabed.
Mae understood the reasons now, of course. She saw why Saoirse felt that she had to come.
But that didn’t mean that she had to like it.
This was supposed to be a Benson family day. Eliza’s day. Hadn’t her eldest gone through enough trials? Now, one more unexpected fork in the road. Some might say that it wasn’t a big deal. Mae could almost see that phrase bubbling up to Dominic’s lips, though it appeared he was wise enough to swallow the words before speaking them out loud to her. But Mae felt otherwise. It was a big deal. Eliza deserved a perfect day. She deserved her mother’s full attention and love.
Surely, though, that meant letting Saoirse perform the ceremony? The only one who would suffer if Mae put her foot down here was her own daughter.
So, as much as Mae didn’t like the thought of seeing her boyfriend’s ex-wife reciting the words that would bind Oliver and Eliza together as husband and wife—well, it didn’t seem like she had much of a choice.
She exhaled, trying to quell her irritation. Then she glanced up at Dominic and nodded once, tightly. He nodded back and pivoted around to go back and tell Saoirse to get ready for the spotlight.
Mae stood on the boardwalk for a couple of long minutes until Leanne came up behind her. She touched her gently on the elbow. “Are you all right, Mrs. Benson?”
Taking one more long, slow breath, Mae opened her eyes and looked at her. The circular wreath behind the altar framed Leanne’s head like a flowery halo. It looked beautiful, as did the sky and the ocean beyond.
Let it go, Mae told herself. She forced a smile across her face and laid her hand on top of Leanne’s.
“Everything will be fine, dear,” she said. “It always is.”
27
Eliza
Eliza had never been so nervous in her entire life.
She knew full well that it was stupid to be nervous. This was a small gathering of friends and family. Everyone in attendance knew her well. They all loved her. They’d tickled her daughter and shaken hands with her soon-to-be husband and broken bread at their house at one point or another.
But, as she stood at the entrance to the walkway that would separate her old life from the married life she was about to begin, she felt like she might melt into a puddle of anxiety. She glanced over at Leanne, who was standing at her side with a broad, encouraging smile on her face, radio in hand, ready to tell her team stationed down at the beach that the bride was about to enter.
“Ready?” she said, raising the walkie-talkie to her mouth, thumb on the trigger.
“Wait.”
Leanne’s hand fell by her side. A concerned look came across her face. “Is something wrong, hon?”
“I can’t do this.”
By “this,” she meant walk down the aisle by herself. Since the moment Oliver had first proposed to her at the airport in New York, she had pictured this exact set of events. It made her break out in a cold sweat every time. Her hands would shake, and she’d have to clamp them together or sit on them.
Eliza had taken her father’s loss perhaps the best of any of the family—or, more accurately, the least visibly. She knew, deep down, that she was aching in her own way. But Eliza’s pain was a private affair. She didn’t invite others to the spectacle, the way Brent and Sara did. She needed to lick her wounds in the darkness, alone. And she’d done that in spades, but maybe she wasn’t quite as healed up as she thought she was. Because, as she stood here with the Nantucket sun just past overhead, she’d never felt colder or lonelier. H
er father was supposed to be here with her. She was supposed to feel his reassuring touch on her elbow, his strength at her side, telling her that everything was going to be okay.
Instead, she felt hollow. Isolated. She could’ve sworn the temperature in the air dropped or the sun passed behind a cloud or something, because there were goose bumps radiating down her spine.
She looked at herself. The dress was a soft, creamy silk, with thin straps over her shoulders, flowing down into gentle folds past her ankles. The makeup artist and hairdresser had each done beautiful work. When she’d looked in the mirror in the bridal room and taken a big, deep breath, she felt pretty, she felt happy, she felt ready.
All that strength had vanished now. Like water sucked down the drain, no trace of it was left.
It wasn’t right that her father was gone. It wasn’t fair. And, though she hadn’t known it, she wasn’t yet finished grieving him.
She felt a tear roll down her cheek. Leanne stepped forward. “Oh, honey,” she said in a soft, sweet voice. She touched Eliza’s shoulder gently. “Do you want me to call someone back here?”
Eliza thought about it. Ever since she began picturing her walk down the aisle, she’d pictured doing it alone. She wanted her father by her side, of course, but if she couldn’t have him, then she wouldn’t have anyone. She was a strong, independent woman. She could show her friends, her family, her world that it was okay to be alone sometimes. Hadn’t her whole life been about that? It was lonely at the top of the mountain, but that was where she’d always wanted to be.
Until she didn’t.
Oliver made her feel like it was okay not to seek out the next peak. It was okay to want love. She’d been scared of that for so long. She didn’t want to be weak. But she needed love more than she’d ever realized.
So maybe she wasn’t ready to do this walk alone. Maybe she never would be. In this moment, though, that didn’t seem like such a weakness.
Because the truth was that she had loved ones who would walk with her. She didn’t have to fight against sorrow and grief as an army of one. She could call for support.
Eliza looked up at Leanne. “I want my mom,” she whispered.
Eliza could hear the shuffle and murmurs of the crowd. There were forty-five people in attendance—small, intimate, just the way she wanted things. But right now, they were all hidden behind the curve in the path. It was just her and her mother. They had maybe half a dozen steps before they broke out into the open and everybody saw them.
But before they did that, Eliza wanted to look her mother in the face once more. She stopped and glanced over. “You look beautiful, Mom,” she said.
Mom smiled in that Mom way she had, the way no one else except maybe Dad knew how to smile. It was a smile that said, “The world is perfect right now because you are my daughter and I am your parent and nothing—not a single gosh-darn thing—can ever, ever change that.” Mom didn’t have to say those words out loud. Her smile did it for her.
“You are the beauty today, my darling.” Mom rested one palm lightly on Eliza’s neck.
Eliza closed her eyes and savored the moment for as long as she could. She felt the wrinkles on her mother’s fingertips. She felt the warmth of her body, the pulse of her heartbeat. The breeze stirred the long grasses around them, casting a soft shushing sound like bedsheets rustling.
“I love you,” she said when she opened her eyes.
“I love you, too,” Mom said. “Now let’s go get you married.”
Laughing, the two of them took the last of the steps that remained. Mom squeezed her elbow as they made their way under the first arch.
The crowd gasped as one. Eliza couldn’t help but smile. She didn’t feel like she had to cry anymore. She felt like laughing actually, like joy was flowing through her bloodstream and filling her so there was no room for anything else but that.
Oliver was standing in front of the flower halo. It was jaw-droppingly gorgeous. He was wearing a navy tuxedo, close to black, but just shy of it, so that the blue of the ocean, the blue of the bluebonnets, and the blue of his outfit all flowed together magnificently. He was smiling, but she could swear she saw the glimmer of a tear in one corner of his eye. She couldn’t wait to tease him about that later. They had a running bet about which of them would cry first. Loser got cake in the face at the reception. Eliza didn’t much mind whether she won or lost.
At the end of the aisle, they stopped. Eliza leaned over and gave her mother a kiss on the cheek. Then she straightened up and admired her for one more second. Mom was so strong. She’d been through more than anyone should have to go through, and yet somehow she still had the strength to lend to Eliza when she needed it most. She looked beautiful today, too, with her hair in loose curls and sapphire earrings matching her necklace. She was nearing her mid-sixties, yes, but her vitality glistened despite the crows’ feet at the corner of her eyes and the subtle graying of her hair. She looked more alive than Eliza could ever remember.
Then it was time to go meet her fiancé at the altar. She and Mom parted ways. Oliver smiled again as Eliza mounted the low platform and took her place across from him. Dominic’s ex-wife Saoirse stood between them. Mom had explained something to Eliza about the minister falling, but she made Eliza promise not to worry about it. Saoirse seemed nice enough, if strangely mysterious. But it seemed right somehow, weirdly enough. There was almost a little bit of magic in the woman’s eyes, like she knew something about the ways of the world that not many other people did. Eliza wasn’t sure whether to chalk it up to pure eccentricity, to her Irish heritage, or something else altogether. Well, those were questions for another time. For now, she turned her gaze to Oliver.
She let herself take in all the details of his face. She wanted to memorize this moment so she could close her eyes and picture it anytime she chose for the rest of her life.
There was a faint scar that ran from his right eyebrow up to his forehead before disappearing in his thicket of hair. His nose was strong and proud, a sharp line straight as an arrow. Those lips—soft, strong, perpetually twitching with a wry smile—were somehow both gentle and solemn right now. As always, she saved his eyes for last. Those were the first things she had ever noticed about him, that night he’d spilled a beer on her in that Nantucket bar. They were brimming with life, green and playful. An artist’s eyes.
He reached out and took her hands in his. After his eyes, his hands were her favorite feature of Oliver’s. They were lithe and strong. She loved watching his fingers stroke the keys of a piano whenever he let her sit and watch him play. Like his eyes, his hands had more life in them than others’ did. The music was in his hands, he always said. He was just the one who was chosen to carry them around. That always made her laugh. Funny and serious and ethereal all at once—that was her Oliver. That was her love.
Saoirse cleared her throat and began reciting the words, but Eliza didn’t or couldn’t or chose not to hear them. They didn’t matter much. This wasn’t about saying one thing or another. Oliver and Eliza had already said everything that needed to be said. They’d made the choices, again and again, every day for lots of days running now, to be with each other and to be a family to her little girl. So she kept staring into his eyes and running her thumb over the backs of his knuckles while Saoirse’s lilting Irish accent rose up and down, almost in time with the waves. Seagulls squawked overhead every now and then. Eliza imagined that they were shouting “Hear hear!” and “Amen!” at particularly stirring parts of Saoirse’s speech.
Eliza turned to look at the crowd. They were all seated in white folding chairs aligned in neat rows. She saw Oliver’s adopted parents, Neal and Marcy. She saw Brent and Rose, with Susanna between them, swinging her legs because they weren’t long enough to reach the ground. She saw Mom, Sara, Joey, Holly, Pete, Alice, Grady. She saw Sheriff Mike, looking hilariously uncomfortable in a suit. She saw Debra and a handsome older man. A new beau, perhaps? Mom had mentioned something about her trying online dating now. Mayb
e it had been successful.
Then, before she could finish looking around and taking stock of who was here, it was time for her and Oliver to exchange vows.
Saoirse looked to Eliza. “Repeat after me, love. I, Eliza Benson …”
“I, Eliza Benson …”
“… take thee, Oliver Patterson …”
“… take thee, Oliver Patterson …”
“… to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward …”
“… to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward …”
“… for better, for worse, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish …”
“… for better, for worse, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish …”
“… till death do us part.”
“… till death do us part.”
Eliza squeezed Oliver’s hands. A life with him. It was here. It was beginning. It was now.
She couldn’t wait to get started.
28
Sara
Saturday night.
“Time to drink!” Joey crowed as they walked up to the yard behind the cottage where the reception was taking place.
“Shush!” Sara admonished, pinching him in the side.
“Ow! What’d I say?”
“It’s time to celebrate love,” she corrected with a wicked grin.
Joey growled and pounced on her before she knew what was happening. He grabbed her by the waist with one hand and put his other hand in the middle of her back as he swooped her into a low dip and kissed her fiercely. By the time he stood her up, her head was spinning.
“Whoa,” she muttered, trying to regain her balance.
“There we go,” Joey said triumphantly. His grin matched Sara’s now. “Love has been celebrated. Now it’s time to drink.”
Sara laughed, rolled her eyes, and grabbed Joey’s hand. Together, they walked into the party.