Glimpse: The Complete Trilogy
Page 32
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In other circumstances, she might have really liked the color of the bridesmaid’s dress that she was wearing (those circumstances involving a universe where her sister wasn’t forcing her to wear it during some bizarre and utterly disturbing caricature of playing happy families). It wasn’t that the ice blue gown wasn’t pretty. For a bridesmaid’s dress (everyone, even socially isolated Lia Lawson, had heard those horror stories), it was positively lovely. The satin sheath dress with a single shoulder strap was a very Meredyth sort of a choice. It was simple and understated. It was pretty without being attention grabbing, and it set off the diamond choker that Meri had insisted upon very nicely. Meredyth was always about understated. If her sister could be said to have a style, then that style would be aloof elegance. Lia’s bridesmaid dress matched that to a tee.
The whole wedding was a very standard Meredyth sort of affair. That made sense; it was, after all, Meredyth’s wedding. Lia didn’t know what it was that she had been expecting. There was no reason for Meredyth to stray from her usual style. It was just that Lia had thought that there might be some sort of a difference given that it was a wedding. Weddings were supposed to be celebrations. This one felt the same as all of Meredyth’s other events -- detached and impersonal. Lia knew that Wyatt and Meredyth were anything but detached and impersonal when it came to their relationship. That whole sit down with Wyatt must have been messing with her mind because she had honestly expected that the arrangements that Meri had made for this wedding would have reflected that.
She could see now that that had been an unreasonable expectation on her part. This was a public event. Detached and impersonal was all anyone was ever going to get from Meredyth in public. She had actually outdone herself with this one. She usually let event planners do most of the decorating and design for the charity functions that she was in charge of, but this felt as if Meri had gone out of her way to make sure that the aloof premise held through all aspects of the day.
From the ice blue dress that Lia herself was wearing to the flower arrangements that were so uniformly designed that they blurred from one into another with nothing standing out or catching attention, there was nothing that was Meredyth and Wyatt. There was only Meredyth’s carefully maintained public facade of blandness. The only sign that it was a wedding (as opposed to some sort of a corporate mingling soirée) was the presence of the starkly white cake with its token ice blue flower adorning the top. It didn’t look inviting. It looked like a mock up for an advertisement -- untouchable and too perfect to be real.
Lia thought that Meredyth was likely vastly pleased that it had come out that way. Too perfect to be real would be something that her sister would consider a complement of the highest order.
The only bit of life being breathed into the atmosphere was the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Walsh (not the new ones). Not even the untouchable, detached vibe was capable of cowing the two of them on their eldest’s wedding day. They were happy, and they clearly saw no reason for anyone to not be aware of that fact. They mingled, they chatted, and they spread beneficent cheer where ever they went. It made Lia smile by proxy. Partly, it was because the two of them were just so cute all caught up in each other and in the day. Also, it was because it was a nice reminder that not even Meri could control everything. Her new parents-in-law were most decidedly outside of her dominion. The Walshes moved about the place bringing warmth to the otherwise cold atmosphere of the room. Most of the guests seemed to gravitate toward them at one point or another. They were infectious.
Her father was maintaining his distance. He didn’t look as though he cared to be infected. Further, he looked as if he was barely containing himself from sneering in their general direction. Meredyth, for everything Lia disliked about her, at least managed to refrain from eyeing guests as if they were tracking slime across a freshly mopped floor. What was their father’s problem? For all the times that Lia had regretted the lack of a father’s presence in her life, there were always times like this when she noticed some of her father’s reactions and found herself thinking that she had gotten off easy to have him uninvolved.
Meredyth seemed to be determined not to notice his displeasure. Lia knew her better than that. Somewhere in there was the sister that Lia had known as a child. She hoped that her new in-laws’ happiness soaked in for her sake. Her wedding should be happy. She should be happy in it. It shouldn’t be about her pretensions. It shouldn’t be about her image or plans or scheming. It should be about her and Wyatt and the commitment of their life together.
Lia didn’t know why her thoughts were taking that track. It was none of her business. She shouldn’t be concerned with what Meri was thinking or feeling on her wedding day. She should be furious with Meredyth. She should be a lot of things that she wasn’t. There was no point in being furious with Meredyth. It didn’t make anything better. It didn’t fix the situation. It didn’t get her out of her careful management of her school days. It didn’t get her in contact with Connor or Anna or Kyle. It didn’t change what the two of them had become to each other. She put a stop on her thoughts. They were straying into maudlin again. She didn’t need that. She needed to do something constructive -- now that she had finally escaped the overzealous photographer, she needed to pick a likely target for borrowing an ink pen.
She was contemplating her timing (if she got a pen and disappeared for a few minutes during the cake cutting surely Meri wouldn’t notice, right?) when Will tapped her on the shoulder.
“Welcome to the family,” he told her while clasping her hand between his own. It was beautifully done -- smooth really. It even took her a moment to realize what it was that he was doing. Not a person in the room should have been able to tell that he had slipped something into her hand. That, however, was going to be a moot point momentarily. The object wasn’t exactly small -- it felt rather like a jump drive. Lia wasn’t sure that she would be able to make it not obvious that she was holding something. It wasn’t like she had pockets that she could conceal something in either -- formal dresses weren’t conducive to such clandestine activities.
Will, it seemed, was actually one step ahead of her. “Tearing up, are you? Well, they say weddings do that to women. Here you are.” The next thing Lia knew Will had wandered back off into the crowd, and she was holding a handkerchief in her hand. Smooth. Will had been very smooth. She wondered if the handkerchief section had been planned or if he had come up with it when he realized her difficulty. It didn’t matter; she was impressed either way.
She had been deeply concerned that Will wasn’t going to come through for her. (She had, after all, almost given in to the urge to follow her sister’s new mother-in-law to the restroom and start spilling her guts. There was something about Mrs. Walsh that made that seem like an appealing option. There was, however, something about her current situation that made her fundamentally unwilling to take a chance on anyone that she couldn’t be sure would be on her side.)
She didn’t need to worry about that anymore. She had no idea what Will had just given her, but she already felt better. Something had changed. She didn’t know what it was yet, but it had to be a change for the better. Didn’t it?
She just had to get through the next few hours without getting busted with whatever it was that she was holding clutched in that handkerchief (and finding a better place to put it would be the first step toward accomplishing that). Then, she would be on her way back to school where she could figure out what it was she had and what she could do with it. She was actually looking forward to going back to school (not that that should be all that surprising considering how desperate she was to be out from under Meredyth’s constant surveillance). That was ironic -- funnily so if she hadn’t been the one in the middle of it. She had spent all of those months counting on December coming to get her away from where she had been. Now, she was counting the minutes until she could go back.
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