A Wedding on Primrose Street (Life In Icicle Falls Book 7) (19 page)

After her shrink sessions with Muriel... “Fine.”

Gigi nodded. “Good. It’s not fun having to pick up the pieces, but you will. I did. Moved here ten years ago after getting rid of my abusive husband. I’ve never been happier. Still, it’s an adjustment. If you ever want to talk, let me know. I’m always up for a break at Bavarian Brews.”

“Thanks. I might take you up on that,” Daphne said. She’d take Cass up on her offer to go out for drinks, too. She needed to start hanging out with more people.

Gigi wrapped her purchase in several layers of tissue paper and Daphne went on her way.

But she didn’t go home. She wasn’t done celebrating yet. The mention of Bavarian Brews made her realize she needed to toast her new beginning.

She’d just picked up a blended coffee drink oozing with caramel and topped with toasted coconut when a male voice rumbled, “Yours looks better than mine.”

She knew that deep baritone. The butterflies on the vase she’d purchased migrated to her chest. She glanced over her shoulder to see Hank Hawkins standing behind her with a to-go cup of coffee.

He held it up. “I take mine plain.”

She would
not
allow herself to be interested in how Hank Hawkins took his coffee (or anything else about him), but it would be rude not to make some polite conversation. “I like black coffee now and then, too, but it’s more fun when you dress it up. Is this coffee-break time?” she asked, noting his grass-stained jeans and the flannel shirt he wore over a T-shirt. He sure knew how to fill out a T-shirt.

“Yup. How about you?”

“I’m finished working for the day. Just stopped by to celebrate.” Or did she mean medicate? No, no, no. She was celebrating. Mitchell and the heartbreak he’d caused were going to be nothing but a distant memory.

“Celebrate the end of work?”

“Nope, the end of my marriage.”

He took a step closer. “So, you’re a free woman.”

She backed up. “Free forever.”

“Forever’s a long time.”

It was getting hot in here. She undid the buttons on her sweater. She noticed him watching, and that made the hot flash hotter. She took a big sip of her cold beverage. “So is being in a bad marriage.”

He nodded. “I know what you mean, and I don’t blame you for not wanting to try again. I sure didn’t want to.”

She noticed his use of the past tense but decided not to comment on it.

“But a bad marriage is a little like hitting your thumb with a hammer.”

Or your head.

“It hurts like the devil at first, but after a while your thumb recovers and you forget the hurt. Then you’re back swinging the hammer again.”

“Have you forgotten the hurt?”

He smiled. He had a very sexy smile. It was definitely hot in here. She took another gulp of her drink.

“It’s in the past. No sense living there. I’m ready to pick up the hammer again.”

She knew what that translated to. He was ready for another relationship. She wasn’t. The time would never be right for her.
From now on every choice I make will be the best choice for me...
The best choice she could make right now would probably be to scram.

“Not all men are jerks,” Hank said.

“No. Only the ones I’m attracted to.”

But Hank Hawkins didn’t seem like a jerk at all. He seemed like a nice, trustworthy man.

Looks could be deceiving, Daphne reminded herself. It was time to go. “I’d better get home.”

He saluted her with his coffee. “Have a good one.”

She would. Her life had no way to go but up.
I’m not going to worry about past mistakes, no matter where I’ve made them
, she told herself.

Her mother must have seen her coming. She opened the front door for Daphne as she came in bearing her new vase. “How did it go at court?”

“Fine,” Daphne said, walking in. “I’m a free woman, and from now on I’m going to make better choices.”

Mother gave a satisfied nod. “I know you will, dear. What’s that you’ve got?”

“I’ll show you.” Daphne started for the back parlor where they did all their living.

“No, no. Show me here.”

What on earth was that about? Was her mother getting eccentric in her old age? But Daphne complied, setting down the bag and pulling her vase out of the tissue paper.

“Oh,” Mother said, her voice filled with awe. “How lovely.”

“It’s my divorce present to me,” Daphne said.

“Butterflies,” Mother said softly. “How appropriate.”

“I thought so,” Daphne said, pleased that her mother got the symbolism.

“Well, put that away where it won’t get knocked over and then come on back to the parlor. I have something for you. It’s an early birthday present,” Mother added, suddenly looking like a woman who’d just learned where the Easter bunny hid his cache of Cadbury eggs.

Very mysterious. Daphne put her vase on the dresser in her bedroom and went back downstairs to see what her mother was up to. She entered the back parlor to find Mother bent over some kind of animal carrier. “What on earth?”

Mother stood up and turned around. She was holding a black cat.

“That looks like...” No, it couldn’t be.

“Milo,” Mother said. She walked over to Daphne and placed the cat in her arms. “I know your birthday isn’t until later in the month, but I thought you should have him now.”

The animal purred and snuggled up against her shoulder. Oh, yes, they were meant to be together. Still, her mother’s views on pets had been pretty clear.

“But we don’t want animals here.” So, was this gift another subtle nudge for Daphne to find her own place? “And you were worried about people with allergies.”

“I’m aware of what I said,” Roberta said crisply. “But I reconsidered. We’ll find a way to work around the allergy problem. Anyway, I think we could use the company around here, don’t you?”

Daphne didn’t know what to think.

“This is your home, too,” she added.

It was such a simple statement but it meant so much. Once more she found herself with tears in her eyes, but these were the best kind of tears, the kind that sprang from a healing heart.

“Thank you,” she said, giving her mother a one-armed hug and a kiss on the cheek. Milo seconded her thanks with a loud meow.

“You’ve had a rough time of it these past few months, but things will get better now. A strong woman can get through anything.”

Her mother was testimony to that. She never spoke much about her own mother, but the lack of communication between the two of them had said it all. Roberta Gilbert had single-handedly carved out her successful life here in Icicle Falls.

Daphne wasn’t her mother, and yet she must have inherited that independence gene. All she had to do was find it. And she would, because from now on she was making wise choices, the right choices—for her.

Chapter Nineteen

Anne, Queen of Disaster Relief

O
utdoor weddings were lovely...as long as it didn’t rain. Anne looked at the cloudy sky covering Lake Washington like a dome of doom and sighed. It had been sunny all day and Anne had begun to hope that the weatherman was wrong. Why couldn’t the rain have held off a little longer? She’d reminded the bride and her mother that end of April was not a good choice for cooperative weather. In Seattle anything before the Fourth of July was a risk.

But Felicity had her heart set on an outdoor wedding, and her mother, Trina, had her heart set on giving Felicity anything she wanted. “She’s my only baby,” Trina had said. “I want her to be happy.”

Anne could understand that. Although she did encourage the bride to have a plan B.

“It won’t rain,” Felicity had said blithely.

“If it does, I guess we’ll have to squeeze into the basement,” her mother had said with a helpless shrug. Later she’d confided to Anne. “I don’t know how we’ll fit everyone in the house.”

“That’s something to consider,” Anne had responded diplomatically.

Mother and daughter did consider it, and the bride-to-be stuck to her plan for an outdoor wedding. They cut the guest list, but not enough, since even after that her mother worried about where they’d put everyone.

Planning the event had been easy. Both mother and daughter had been delighted with all of Anne’s ideas, making it a snap to take care of ordering the cake and flowers and finding the DJ and caterer, renting the chairs and the tent and the dishes and linens. Now all sat in readiness waiting for the bridal party to finish with photos in the garden and on the dock.

Anne blinked as something wet hit her in the eye. This was followed by another something wet splashing her cheek. Oh, no. Here came the rain.

The photographer was finishing up, and Felicity and her groom and their posse began horsing around on the dock, the guys pretending to push the girls off and the girls squealing in mock horror. Ah, the energy of youth. They seemed oblivious of the darkening gray clouds and the spatter.

The mother of the bride wasn’t, though. She hurried over to Anne, her face a study in motherly concern. “Oh, Anne, you were right. This was a bad idea. I wish I’d never let Felicity talk me into this.”

Anne was never one for I-told-you-so. “What would you like to do?”

“Felicity will want to wait and see if this blows over.”

Maybe it would, but not in time for the wedding to take place outdoors. They’d have to move the ceremony inside. Anne looked over to where Felicity stood on the dock, laughing. A speedboat decorated with flowers bobbed next to it, ready for the father of the bride to motor the couple to an undisclosed wedding-night location. She felt sorry for Felicity and her mom. They’d taken a gamble and lost.

Trina shook her head. “She wanted an outdoor wedding so badly, and she wanted it this weekend.”

Anne knew why. Trina had told her. Felicity had wanted to honor her older sister, who had died in April twelve years earlier from childhood leukemia. Later in the evening the wedding party planned to toss their flowers on the lake in honor of her.

When Anne had brought up concerns about the weather, Felicity had insisted that the day she’d picked would be sunny. It had to be. The universe couldn’t be that cruel.

It had been all Anne could do not to say, “Oh, yes, it can. In fact, the universe doesn’t care two figs about you or any of us.”

1997

Anne burrowed under her blankets on the couch and turned up the TV, ignoring the ringing phone. She knew it would be her mom calling to check up on her, but she didn’t want to talk to anyone, not even Mom. All she wanted to do was stay here forever watching soaps on TV and feeling sorry for herself. She’d been doing a pretty good job of it, too. So far, forever had lasted three months. She barely cleaned; she served sandwiches and canned chili for dinner, and let her business slide, leaving Kendra, who’d only recently come on board, scrambling.

“We can try again,” Cam had said after her first miscarriage, holding her in his arms and kissing the top of her head.

But now she was convinced it didn’t matter how many times they tried. They were never going to have another baby.

“It’s a blessing in disguise,” her grandmother had said after each miscarriage. “Something must’ve been wrong with the baby. This is nature’s way of telling you to start again.”

No, it was nature’s way of taunting her. She’d always thought they’d have at least two children, maybe three, or even four. She’d longed to hear the thunder of feet as her children raced up and down the stairs, longed to hear giggles and see sisters and brothers playing together in the backyard. She felt cheated and angry, and she felt especially angry at God. This was her third miscarriage. How could He let this happen?

“How is it that any bad thing happens?” her mother had responded earlier in the week when Anne was venting her anger. “There are no guarantees in this world. You know that. All we can do is enjoy the good things that come our way and accept the bad.”

Well, Anne didn’t want to accept the bad. Her arms ached to hold the little one who’d tried so hard to hang on inside her. She felt the loss as surely as if she’d carried the baby to term. Now she was in deep mourning, her husband and daughter mere figures, blurred and moving at the dark edges of her grief.

The phone rang again. She turned the volume on the TV even higher.

Later in the day she was still on the couch when her mom let herself in with the spare key Anne and Cam kept under the flowerpot out front. “I don’t want to see anyone,” Anne greeted her and burrowed deeper under her blankets.

“I know.” Her mother sat down on the opposite end of the couch, settling Anne’s feet in her lap and starting a foot massage.

“It’s not fair,” Anne said bitterly.

“I know. But you still have a living daughter.”

Anne pulled her foot away. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Her mother calmly took back her foot and resumed rubbing. “I’m only agreeing with you.”

“No, you’re not. You’re trying to teach me a lesson.”

Julia smiled. “Things always had to be fair when you were growing up. I had to make sure you and your sister both got the exact same number of cookies for your after-school snack, the exact same number of gifts at Christmas. And, oh, the complaints when she was allowed to stay up as late as you on special occasions.”

“I don’t know where you’re going with this.”

“Going? I’m simply agreeing with you. It’s
not
fair. It’s not fair that you still have a healthy, happy child when so many women all over the world wind up with none. Come to think of it, it’s not fair that you have such a kind, loving husband who’s always there for you. Or such a nice house. And plenty of food on the table.”

“Now you’re going to lay a guilt trip on me for feeling the way I do?” Anne demanded, incredulous.

Julia stopped the foot rub. “No, sweetie. Remember, I had a miscarriage between you and Kendra and it broke my heart. But I couldn’t stay brokenhearted forever. I still had a child who needed me. And after losing the baby, well, you became even more precious.”

Anne had been too wrapped up in her grief to remember what she still had.

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t mourn this loss,” her mom continued. “All those hopes and dreams, gone, the little one finished before even getting a chance at life. It’s horrible. But at some point you have to go on. You can’t lie on this couch forever. And you can’t let yourself become bitter. It’s not fair to your husband and the child you have.”

Anne chewed her lip, taking that in and yet wishing she didn’t have to.

“You still have so much to be thankful for,” Julia said gently.

“I don’t want to be thankful, damn it!” This was followed by a storm of tears and a maternal shoulder to cry on. And hugs. And a quiet prayer together.

An hour later, Anne got up and made a real dinner for her family for the first time in three months.

Dinner wasn’t all she made. She made an attitude adjustment, too. She reentered life with a vengeance. She and Cam took tango lessons and started scheduling a monthly date night.

On their first night out, as they sat in a little Italian restaurant in lower Queen Anne, enjoying pizza and Chianti, she thanked him for being so patient and understanding. “I know you always wanted to have more kids.”

“But I’ve got you and Laney, and I’m okay with that, Annie. In fact, I’m more than okay. I think I’m a pretty lucky guy.”

“And I’m a lucky woman,” she said.

He raised his glass to her. “We’ve got a lot to be thankful for, babe.”

Yes, they did, she thought as they clinked glasses. Cam and her mother were right. In spite of what she’d lost, she could still be thankful for what she had.

* * *

Now the wind had arrived, whipping the water on Lake Washington into whitecaps and tearing at the pretty white tent. While the groom and his groomsmen carried chairs into the basement, Anne, the bride and her mother and aunt all went into a wedding huddle.

The bride began to cry, her eyeliner running. “I can’t believe this! Where are we going to put everyone?”

“We’ll make it work,” Anne promised her. The basement was roomy and finished and had a fireplace, perfect for a floral arrangement. The bride and groom could take their vows in front of it. They’d have to forgo the tables and squeeze chairs along the walls. A number of guests would have to stand, and in the interests of squeezing everyone in, the bride would have to don a raincoat and make her entrance via the patio door.

“Good idea,” said the aunt after Anne had shared her ideas. “We can do this.”

“Go fix your makeup,” Trina said. “We’ll take care of everything.”

And they did. With Anne supervising, everyone got busy preparing for plan B. The bride patched up her makeup and found her smile again, even as the rain beat on the windows.

The guests came and the basement got hot with all the bodies in it. So hot, in fact, that the bride fainted just before saying, “I do.” Father fretted while the groom carried her to the nearest chair, and a friend of the family who happened to be a doctor helped revive her. A door was opened and a gust of wind blew in, along with a neighbor’s dog, who insisted on greeting one of the guests with his muddy paws. In spite of all that, the bride and groom finished their vows and the guests enjoyed their salmon, getting their food from the upstairs kitchen and spreading throughout the house to eat with their plates on their laps.

As the evening continued, the wind blew away the clouds and the night cleared up enough for dancing on the soppy lawn and, most important, for the bride and her bridesmaids and the groom and his groomsmen to cast their flowers on the water in memory of the bride’s sister.

“For a while there I wasn’t sure I’d be able to say this,” Trina said to Anne, “but it was a wonderful wedding.”

“Your daughter’s a wonderful girl.”

They turned to watch as, in the middle of the lawn, the groom spun his new bride in a circle, both of them laughing.

Bride and groom happy, mother of the bride happy—mission accomplished.