Mother of the Bride (3 page)

“That's very perceptive of you, Aldo.” If he was telling the truth, and Cydney felt that Aldo was—from his perspective, anyway.

“Uncle Gus was only twenty-five when he hit it big. All the publicity and hype and women drooling all over him at book signings really got to him. That's why he moved us to the Ozarks. Believe me, Miss Parrish, nobody can find Crooked Possum or my Uncle Gus unless he wants them to.”

“Is that so?” Cydney fanned the flush creeping up her neck with the
TV Guide
she'd snatched off the table.

Because she'd tried to find it herself, Cydney knew Crooked Possum wasn't on any Missouri road map. She'd spent hours looking for it last summer while she was in Branson—the
nearest point of civilization as well as the upstart Mecca of country music—shooting a photo spread for a travel magazine. She'd wandered over hill and dale and never found the place, but she'd gotten some breathtaking shots of soaring ridges and shady hollows she'd sold for a nice chunk of change to a calendar company.

“Since you're twenty-one now, I don't see how your uncle can stop you and Bebe from getting married,” Cydney said. “Especially if he never sets foot out of the Ozarks.”

“This just might bring him out,” Aldo said worriedly. “And Uncle Gus can be damn hard to get along with when he makes up his mind to be difficult.”

“Don't worry, Aldo,” Cydney said firmly. “So can I.”

Oh please,
her little voice said.
You have trouble making up the bed.

“Uncle Cyd!” Bebe let out a shriek and came pelting out of the kitchen. “Guess what, Uncle Cyd! Guess what?” She was jumping up and down, her braid bouncing and her eyes shining. “Gramma George is getting married, too!”

chapter

three

Nothing could have surprised Cydney more. Except hearing, maybe, that her mother planned to butch her perfectly coiffed champagne-blond hair, dye it pink, pierce her nose and join a metal band. Which didn't sound like a bad idea.

By the time supper was over, a melt-on-your-fork pot roast provided by Georgette and her Crock-Pot, Cydney was beginning to consider it. Or maybe a Tibetan nunnery. Anything to escape the oohing and ahhing Bebe and Georgette were doing over the latest issue of
Bride
magazine.

She could hear them in the living room while she loaded the dishwasher, wiped the counters, the refrigerator door— Gosh, where did all those fingerprints come from?—the canisters, the bread box, the microwave. She polished the ceramic-tile tabletop and had just started on the range hood when the brides came trooping into the kitchen with Aldo.

“Coffee break,” Georgette said, nudging Cydney aside to put the stainless steel kettle on the electric burner.

“I'm going to take Aldo back to his apartment,” Bebe said, snuggling under the arm he'd draped over her shoulders.

“Do you have a roommate, Aldo?” Cydney asked.

“Uh, no,” he said, flushing to the roots of his hair.

Cydney ignored Bebe's muttered “You should've said yes,” and handed her the pencil and notepad she kept by the telephone. “Phone number and address. If you aren't home by eleven, I'm calling. If you aren't home by eleven-thirty—”

“I know.” Bebe finished writing and handed the pad back to Cydney. “You'll be knocking at the front door.”

“My Uncle Gus will love you, Miss Parrish.” Aldo grinned
at her over his shoulder as Bebe tugged him out of the kitchen and into the dining room, where a pair of French doors led outside onto the patio. “Don't worry. Bebe will be home on time. She has classes in the morning and so do I.”

“I'll be home late tomorrow, Uncle Cyd.” Bebe opened the right-hand door and turned to face her. “We're picking up Aldo'scar.”

“Is it being repaired?”

“Nope,” Aldo said. “It's my birthday present to me. A Jaguar XJ8.”

“How nice.” Cydney had no idea what a Jag went for, but with Bebe's ring she figured Aldo must've put a huge dent in his trust fund. “By the way, Aldo. Happy birthday.”

“Thanks, Uncle Cyd.” He grinned as Bebe tugged him out of the house. “I'll make sure Bebe's home on time.”

The door clicked shut behind them and Cydney frowned. Maybe Angus Munroe was right to be worried. She trailed Bebe and Aldo to the French doors and flipped the wall switch that turned on the outside lights—the carriage lamps on the patio wall, the yard light in the middle of the lawn, and the security flood on the detached two-car garage.

This time yesterday it had been dusk, now it was dark. The maple tree's fiery leaves looked as dull and brown as the brick walls of the house and the garage, as faded and lifeless as Cydney felt watching Bebe and Aldo splash through them.

“Aldo seems like a very responsible young man,” Georgette said over the shriek of the kettle, but Cydney didn't answer.

She stood at the French doors with her arms folded and tears pricking her eyes as the garage door went up and Bebe's red Mustang backed down the driveway. As soon as Gwen got home from Russia, Bebe would be married and gone. Cydney was happy for her—she truly was—but she couldn't help wondering what she was supposed to do with the empty room in her house and the hole in her life. Get a cat?

She waited to make sure Bebe remembered to push the remote to shut the garage door, then turned into the kitchen and sighed. So did the kettle as her mother took it off the burner and made her coffee.

Cydney drank tea, but she kept instant decaf for Georgette. In a silver caddy with a spoon clipped to the side that her mother had given her to put on the Lazy Susan in the middle of the kitchen table because the coffee jar sitting there looked s-o-o-o tacky. Cydney didn't think so, but Cydney hadn't said so. She'd said thank you and polished the damn thing every month or so, so it wouldn't tarnish.

“You were a little heavy-handed with Bebe, don't you think?” Georgette stirred Sweet 'N Low into her coffee and glanced at Cydney. “She's nineteen years old and engaged to be married.”

“So I should suspend the rules?”

“A girl only gets engaged once.”

Oh really? Cydney wanted to snap. This is your second engagement and Gwen's fifth. Which had nothing to do with the fact that Cydney had never even been asked to go steady. Nothing at all.

“Even more reason,” she said, shuddering at the memory of Bebe and Aldo tangled in the bedsheets, “to enforce the rules.”

“I can see my face in the countertop.” Georgette turned away from the gleaming butcher block. “Would you like me to don my white glove? Or would you rather tell me what's bothering you?”

“Truthfully,” Cydney said bluntly, “I don't believe for two seconds that you actually intend to marry Herb Baker.”

“But of course I do.” Georgette carried her cup and saucer and cloth napkin—she broke out in hives at the mere thought of paper ones—to the table and sat down. “In a candlelight ceremony on December twenty-fourth at eight P.M. Just as I wrote in the engagement announcement I'm going to fax to your father as soon as I get home.”

“I rest my case.” Cydney gave a triumphant smile and sat down across the table from her mother. “You're still trying to make Dad jealous.”

Georgette's eyebrow arched again. “I also plan to fax it to the society editor at the
Star
for inclusion in this Sunday's column.”

“Considering the time difference between Kansas City and Cannes,” Cydney went on, unconvinced, “your fax will be the first thing Dad sees when he walks into his office tomorrow.”

“Of course it will be. I planned it that way.”

“Hoping, of course, to ruin his day.”

“On the contrary. I'm sure it will make his day.” Georgette sipped her coffee and smiled. “No more alimony.”

“So that's your story and you're sticking to it?”

“It's the way things are, Cydney.” Georgette reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I know the divorce was difficult for you, but you're a grown woman now. It's time you realize your father isn't coming home to us.”

“I know that, Mother.” Cydney jerked her hand away. “You're the one who's been saying for the last eighteen years that someday Fletch will get tired of all those voluptuous young bodies and come crawling back to you. You're the one who cross-stitched it on a sampler.”

“It's not a sampler, it was a pillowcase. It was part of my Coping with Divorce therapy and I threw it away ages ago.”

“I should hope so, Mother. I'm sure it was threadbare.”

“So is my patience, Cydney. That's why I said yes on Sunday when Herb asked me again to marry him. I'm not getting any younger.”

“You're only fifty-eight,” Cydney said, trying to be encouraging. “I'll bet you don't even have spider veins.”

“Of course I don't. I exercise to keep my metabolism up and my circulation going.”

Cydney belonged to a gym but rarely had time to go. She hadn't had time for much of anything since Bebe had moved in with her five years ago, when Georgette's book,
Etiquette for All Occasions,
came out and her column really started to take off.

“If you could keep Bebe for just a while,” her mother had cajoled. “Until I get all these damn TV shows and book signings out of my hair.”

Of course Cydney said yes. She loved Bebe, and her niece spent most weekends with her anyway, so Georgette would have time to write. A fourteen-year-old, Cydney soon discov-
ered, took a lot of time. So did a fifteen-year-old, a sixteen-year-old and so on.

Cydney didn't have time for the gym, but Georgette had time to exercise two hours a day, beginning with a morning jog and laps in the indoor pool Fletcher Parrish's alimony paid for. In the afternoon she dictated her column to her secretary while she did the Stairmaster with nary a huff or a puff.

In the last five years, Georgette had published two updates to
Etiquette for All Occasions,
while Cydney's book was unfinished. Georgette still had time for TV appearances and book signings. Cydney didn't have time to wind her watch. She had spider veins and her mother didn't.

There's a word for what you are,
her little voice said.

“Chump,” Cydney said. Georgette shot her a sharp glance over her cup, put it down and asked, “What did you say?”

“‘Chump,’ Mother,” she said fiercely. “I said ‘chump.’ “

“That's no way to talk about your father, Cydney.”

I'm not talking about Dad, Cydney wanted to shriek, I'm talking about me! But she didn't. As usual. She just sat gritting her teeth and watching her mother sip her coffee. Was she the chump of the century or was she just feeling sorry for herself?

Always the bridesmaid and never the bride. Not that she wanted to get married. She loved her life. She really did. Cydney hadn't a clue why she suddenly felt so angry and abused.

“I should be off.” Georgette carried her cup and saucer to the sink, rinsed them and turned to face Cydney. “Remind Bebe to call me tomorrow when she gets home. We're going shopping for her wedding dress.”

“Are you sure you have the time?”

The words were out before Cydney knew it, in a nasty, waspish snap that surprised her and jerked her out of her chair. Georgette tucked the Crock-Pot Cydney had washed and shined with Windex under her arm, turned away from the counter and arched an eyebrow.

“What's the matter, darling? Feeling put-upon?”

Cydney faked a laugh. “Who, me?”

“You'd be a fool if you didn't.”

Cydney blinked. “I would?”

“Of course you would.” Georgette unhooked her purse from the back of her chair and looped it over her shoulder. “We all take shameless advantage of you.”

“Well.” Cydney shrugged. “I wouldn't say shameless exactly.”

“You would if I weren't standing here.” Georgette laughed. “And you'd be absolutely right. I've been feeling very guilty about it lately. I'm as happy for you as I am for Bebe that she's getting married. Now you'll have all the time in the world to finish that book you've been writing for the past ten years.”

“Five years,” Cydney corrected her. “It's only five years, Mother.”

“No more using Bebe as an excuse for not having time to write.” Georgette wagged a finger at Cydney, then gently caught her chin. “Don't be so afraid of failing, darling, that you never try.”

Then she dropped a kiss on Cydney's cheek and sailed through the dining room, her car keys jangling as she fished them out of her purse. “Don't forget to remind Bebe to call me when she gets home!”

The French doors slammed shut and Cydney's mouth fell open. She stood in the middle of her kitchen, slack-jawed and stunned at her mother's perceptiveness.

How had Georgette known? How had she given herself away? How come she couldn't have been born an orphan?

Well, you know what they say,
her little voice said.
If it isn't one thing, it's your mother.

chapter

four