Tulle Death Do Us Part (30 page)

His parents smiled and kissed again.

“Oh! Speaking of dads, I’ve gotta run. Hey, all of you, Robin and Glen, Eve and Jay, come to a party. It’s at my shop. Eve, show them the way.” I grabbed Werner’s hand and ran.

My second floor had been transformed into a lavender fairyland. And there beside the orchestra was a spot for the emcee, our old friend Tunney Lague. Heck, he was everybody in town’s old friend.

“Ah,” Tunney said. “Our Madeira’s here. Time to get this party officially under way. Harry, my old friend, has a plan, and I do believe he kept it from most of us until the very last minute. Even me. He only gave me my to-do list this morning. Nobody’s as organized as old Harry.”

“And nobody tells so many secrets as Tunney Lague,” my dad replied. My father cleared his throat. “And let’s call me young Harry for tonight, okay, my friend?”

“Will do.” Tunney raised his glass. “Let’s have a drink to young Harry Cutler.” Our emcee smacked his lips and went back to his script.

Aunt Fee’s jaw sat kind of slack. I put my fingers to her chin to raise it.

“What is he up to?” she asked.

Werner stepped in and came to our side, encircling my hand with one of his. Dante appeared and stood beside Dolly. She tittered.

“Young Harry,” Tunney said, “your turn to take the floor.”

My father went up the steps to a dais with a curtain behind it. “Fiona, would you please join me up here to lead the evening in the right direction?”

“Has he been drinking with Tunney?” she asked near my ear before she followed him right up there.

My sisters, I was surprised to note, were
both
here, Sherry and her husband, Justin, even Brandy with her significant other, Cort—Sherry’s father-in-law, also known as Deborah’s ex-husband. My brother, Alex, and his wife, Trish, too. Chairs were arranged to face the curtain up front.

Dad took Fiona in his arms and kissed her senseless forever, until the wolf whistles were making me deaf, and the drummer built to a crescendo.

Then my dad stepped back and grinned. “First surprise: I can be spontaneous. Second: I can kiss in public.”

Everyone laughed.

“Watch this. I can kneel in public, too.” Which he did.

Fiona slapped a hand to her mouth.

He took out a small velvet box and opened it. “Fiona Sullivan, heart of my heart, will you do me the greatest honor and become my wife, till death do us part?” He furrowed his brow. “And maybe not even, which means I’ll have two of you. Wow, that’s a bit scary.”

The Cutler kids—me included—and Aunt Fiona, too, thought that was hilarious.

She might have been laughing, but her hands shook as he slipped the diamond on her engagement finger. “Yes,” she whispered.

“We can’t hear you,” we chorused.

“Yes!” she shouted, and Dad rose to take her in his arms again.

“An engagement party,” she said. “A surprise engagement party.”

“Oh no, sweet, did you think this was over? No, no no. Go into Madeira’s storage closet, will you? You’ll find everything you need in there.”

“Ooh, not everything.” I thought I’d grabbed her veil a few days ago to bring here to fix. But had my dad put that thought into my head? Or my mom?

Fiona looked forsaken. “You’re sending me away?” But she said it as she admired her engagement ring.

My father blew her a kiss. “We’ll call you back when we’re ready.”

My brother, Alex, led her to my storage area and shut them in. I opened the door a crack to hand them the veil and was told to wait right outside the door.

A minister stepped up to the top of the dais, and Tunney pulled the curtains to reveal an arch decorated with lavender roses behind it. My dad stopped at the middle step and turned to face his guests.

Tunney instructed us to take our seats, though I stayed where I was told, by the chairs lined up in front of the arch, then Tunney cued the bandleader, and they played the traditional wedding march.

The doors to the closet opened, and five-year-old Kelsey, in a full-length gown borrowed from Sherry’s wedding, led the parade straight to the dais. Behind her, Sherry, in lavender on Justin’s arm, pushed a lavender decorated, twin baby stroller with Riley and Kathleen inside.

My sister Brandy and Cort followed.

After them, Alex told me to go up the aisle as maid of honor.

I waited and waved to Robin, Glen, Jay, and Eve, in the back row, all grinning, and more often than not, necking.

Then my brother, Alex, escorted our former Aunt Fiona—not really our aunt—eyes bright, her bouquet a ball of lavender roses, up the aisle. Alex handed her to my dad with a kiss and my dad and his soon to be new wife went up to meet the minister.

“Harry,” Fee whispered, not knowing the minister was holding a mike. “We don’t have a marriage license.”

“Yes we do.”

“
I
never signed one.”

“Sure you did. You thought it was a potting-shed permit.”

“You
distracted
me!”

The guests tittered.

Dad’s grin went very wide, entertaining the guests the more while Aunt Fee’s back went ramrod straight.

“Before we begin,” my father said. “I have an O. Henry quote for my bride.”

We all groaned. “‘There she plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).’”

Aunt Fee nodded. “I’ll rebut with George Meredith: ‘The
task of reclaiming a bad man is extremely seductive to good women.’”

Oh, my stars and garters, they were a perfect match
.

The minister began the formal part of the ceremony, after which he asked if they had their own words to speak. They winged it perfectly. Not a dry eye in the house.

The scent of chocolate was to die for.

There was no meal at this late hour, but a lovely dessert buffet, so people thought the aroma of chocolate came from there.

Fiona and I knew better. We cried as we embraced. “Did you know?” she asked.

“Not until I saw your flower girl. He pulled one over on the best of us. I had no idea he’d planned an entire wedding!” I leaned in to whisper, “I didn’t know and I’m a psychic sleuth, for heaven’s sakes.”

My father stuck his head between us. “That’s why we didn’t let you hem Kelsey’s dress,” he whispered.

Ack! “How much do you know…about what I might or might not…know?” I dared ask.

“You remind me of your mother…more every day.”

Neither Fiona nor I asked for clarification. We took him at face value.

The newlyweds stayed for less than an hour, until a white limo whisked them off to the airport and a trip to the South Seas, which is all my father would say, besides, “I’ll call you and I love you,” as he waved.

People walked them to the limo and left. I watched Tunney tuck Dolly into his car from the upper window. The band had another half hour to play, so Werner asked them to continue.

I couldn’t believe my eyes, but I turned and saw my
mother in the next window looking down, watching the limo carrying Dad and Fee roll from my parking lot.

“Mom,” I whispered in my mind, and she turned to me, her eyes glistening.

“You’re happy for them, aren’t you?”

She fisted her hand against her heart and nodded.

“But you miss them.”

Another nod as she started to fade, and my last sight was of her blowing me a kiss.

Werner walked up to me. “Why so sad?”

“My mom,” I said. “It’s natural—”

“You look like you might have seen her. Did you?”

“For the second time in twenty years. The first was at Sherry’s wedding.”

The band played a slow waltz. Werner and I danced, as did Robin and Glen, Eve and Jay, who we talked into staying. The lights dimmed, compliments of Dante.

Werner kissed me as we waltzed, so romantic, so slow, just us, until…

My eyes overflowed, dripped slowly down my face, as I realized what I saw before me.

“No reason to be sad, Cupcake,” Dolly said, young as the day she and Dante had met, dancing in his arms like they’d never been apart.

I knew only one thing for sure: She’d died in her Katharine Hepburn dress, the one like the wedding gown from
The Philadelphia Story
. Two unions had been ordained this night, and only I knew it.

“Why cry?” Dolly asked, eliciting Dante’s killer grin, and her eyes twinkled. “We’re spending eternity together, here, Mad, with you.”

The first purse you saw in the story was Dolly’s bright orange square handbag. Definitely plastic, probably from a five-and-dime store, circa the nineteen sixties. The name is molded inside: “Jaclyn-ette.” It’s about twelve inches square with an accordion fold, it can get up to about five inches wide. It has a mail pouch on the front with a brass latch and grommets, and brass rings that connect the handles. They’re not adjustable. Inside are two zip compartments, one on each side, and the center is a zip compartment of its own. All zippers are metal.

The second bag is a beaded white clutch with a snap closure, about six inches wide and three and a half deep. The corded interior has “Corde Bead” stamped in gold with other lettering that I can’t read inside.

The black-and-white beaded bag, top gold circle-over-ball
snap closure, same size, has “Grandee” stamped on the satin interior.

The fourth is a gold-spun weave with rhinestones sprinkled throughout. Very flat. About seven inches wide, three inches deep. One back pocket. It has a flap the full size of the purse with a snap at the bottom front. Stamped inside the cream satin interior is “Magid” with a pair of wings beneath the word.

I adore the black satin bag. Wider at the bottom at about nine curved inches to six straight at the top, it flares inside its frame and has a bow at the top center. The cream satin interior has a cursive “L” printed and a cursive “PM” above a circle. In the circle, I can only make out the word “Rochette.” This is the only brand of the set that I could not verify. And there’s more writing that I can’t make out. If you know this brand I’d love to hear from you.