Читать книгу Weddings in the Family - Tessa McDermid - Страница 8

The present

A PATCH OF LATE-AFTERNOON sunlight filtered into the room, giving it a slumberous feeling. Caroline settled into the deep leather chair, careful not to rest her head against the back and mess up the elaborate curls her hairdresser had deemed appropriate for the mother of the bride. The soft gray satin of her dress barely made a sound as she smoothed the material over her knees.

In less than two hours, her daughter would be married. By the time the sun went down, Caroline would be on her own with her husband.

Caroline’s head throbbed, a dull ache behind her left eye. Gingerly, she rested her cheek against the cool leather and willed the pain to go away. She could do it; she’d done it before. She just had to concentrate on the center of the pain, visualize the ache flowing out of her body, dissolving in the air…

“Caroline? Are you in here?”

Patty’s voice floated into the room. Caroline was tempted to ignore her, to wait silently in her chair until she was alone again.

But maybe it would help to talk to someone. And Patty had been there almost from the beginning.

“I’m over here.”

Patty’s heels tapped across the polished floor. Her dress was a soft green, the perfect foil for her auburn hair. Her hair’s color had deepened over the years until it now had the patina of fine mahogany. Today she wore it in a smooth chignon at the nape of her neck.

I wore my hair like that when I was married, Caroline thought. I walked down the aisle in the same dress that Reecie’s wearing right now, with my hair twisted into a soft bun so it wouldn’t tangle in the cape.

The thought caused a pain to lodge in her stomach and she pressed her fist against the waistband of her skirt.

“Why are you sitting in the dark?” Patty rested a hand on Caroline’s shoulder. “Are you doing okay?”

Caroline knew the question referred to her daughter’s impending departure. She’d been asked variations of the question over and over during the weeks of wedding preparations.

Each time, she’d been able to blithely reply, “I’m fine.” Having your youngest child and only daughter get married usually caused some turmoil in a person’s life, but no one really expected you to say that.

Patty could stand the truth. Caroline tipped her head back and gave her friend a rueful grin. “Remember when we made those speeches at the beginning of each school year? How sending your five-year-old to kindergarten was the natural order of things, that as parents we were expected to watch our children grow up and grow away from us?”

Patty nodded. She and Richard had never succeeded in having children but she’d been as close as a parent to many of the students who had gone through her classroom.

“It’s all crap.” Caroline closed her eyes and sighed, feeling the air expand her lungs and then leave her body in a long release of misery.

“Caroline.”

Caroline opened her eyes. “No, really, Patty. I don’t want Reecie to go out into the big bad world, even if she does have a wonderful man at her side. I want her to be little again, sleeping in her crib where I can tuck her in each night.”

“You didn’t get this maudlin when Adam got married.”

No, she’d been thrilled and excited at his wedding, dancing and smiling until her husband, Nick, finally had to drag her home so the caterers could finish clearing up and the DJ could leave.

But then, the rest of her life hadn’t been about to change with her son’s marriage.

A lump formed in her throat, making it difficult to swallow. Patty knelt down, the skirt of her gown swishing against the chair. “What’s going on, Caroline? You haven’t been yourself for days. It’s more than Reecie getting married, isn’t it?”

Caroline hesitated. She wanted to tell someone. But Nick deserved to hear it from her first.

A tic started behind her eye, the next stage of her headaches. She’d been getting them more and more frequently, partly, she knew, because she wasn’t getting enough sleep. “I’m tired.”

And she was. All the people in and out of the house, last-minute decisions. The trips and phone calls to clear up a misunderstanding about some aspect of the wedding.

“Reecie was in tears most of this past week,” she said. “The florist called and had lost part of her order, could she remember how many flowers she wanted for the front tables? One of her bridesmaids left her dyed-to-match shoes at home.” She shook her head. “Being the mother of the bride is very different from being the mother of the groom.”

Patty rose to her feet. The sun coming through the paned window dappled her skirt with rays of pink and gold. “That’s it? Just letting Reecie go?”

Caroline could hear the disbelief in her voice. Again, she was tempted to tell her everything. But she couldn’t say a word to anyone until she talked to her husband. She owed him that much at least.

She pushed herself out of the chair and crossed the room with short, jerky steps, hindered in her urge to hurry by the long skirt of her gown. She linked arms with Patty. “It’s harder to let them go than I thought it would be. I told Adam he couldn’t go off to college until I put all his school pictures in that bus frame we bought from some school fund-raiser. He didn’t think that was funny, especially since his junior-and senior-year pictures weren’t in it. I just wish I had some way to hold Reecie back.”

“You don’t mean that.”

No, she didn’t. She wanted her children to be happy, to find someone they could love all of their lives.

That hadn’t been her first goal. She was going to graduate from college, get her master’s degree and change the world. A man hadn’t been necessary for those dreams to come true. Then Nick had come into her life and she’d taken a detour.

And now she was going to ask him for a divorce.

The irony of the timing didn’t escape her. How many times had she heard of couples who divorced after the last child left? She had thought they were overreacting about the empty-nest syndrome, but now she understood. Once the buffer of the kids was gone, it was so much easier to see what was missing in the relationship.

The sun dipped lower in the sky, only a few rays making their way onto the carpet. A bird flew by, its cheery song too loud in the quiet room. Soon she would have to paste on her party smile and join the crowd eager to see her daughter wed. And she did want Reecie to be happy.

Patty clasped Caroline in a light hug, her perfume wafting around the two of them, reminding Caroline of visits when they had sat on the guest bed in their respective homes, laughing and talking and catching up on everything since the last time they’d seen each other. “You’re going to make it,” Patty said. “You always do. You’re one of the strongest women I know. You and Nick have years ahead of you.”

Caroline stumbled and a tear slid down her cheek. She brushed it away before it landed on her dress and spotted the material. “I can’t stop crying,” she said, running her hand under her eyes to catch another tear. “I keep thinking about what life’s going to be like without the kids around—” She hiccuped and pressed her fingers to her lips. She couldn’t finish the thought, even to her best friend.

Without the kids around and with nothing left between Nick and me.

A knock sounded on the door, startling her. “Mom?”

Her son’s voice recalled her to her duties. She swallowed, hoping her voice sounded normal to him. “I’ll be right there, Adam.” She backed away from Patty’s comforting embrace and steeled herself for the next few hours and what she had to do once she and Nick were alone.

Even though, deep down, she wanted to believe that maybe, just maybe, Patty was right.