all happened so fast.”
Too fast if you asked me, but nobody did. Though I was the junior oracle of singleness—at seventeen years and counting, Rochelle held the senior position—once my friends had more than a conversation with a man, I became persona non grata.
No kids? No man? Know nothing. I ought to make bumper stickers.
Rochelle, at least, had experienced being abandoned while giving birth to Jericho. This memory was somehow considered valuable. Too bad I didn’t get credit for being in that hospital room, too. Or finding my sister in that bed with Trevor. Or watching my Adrian marry someone else. My pain, having no offspring or alimony to show for itself, didn’t seem to count.
I’ve caught all your tears in a bottle, marked them all in My book.
God had done that, hadn’t He? Oh, well. I hadn’t meant to get all soppy like this today anyway. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t.
“Aunt Dane, you’re squeezing the blood out of my arm.”
Dana Dane. My nickname. Adrian had given me that, too. Gave so much and took away even more.
“Sorry,” I muttered, turning Jericho loose, remembering the last time I felt like this. Two months ago, the end of July. Sarah from human resources. A tangerine satin gown that actually fit. Overcooked chicken. Decent music. Escorted down the aisle by her eighty-year-old uncle.
Wedding party number nine.
Chapter Two
She got him. I don’t know how, but Tracey managed to get Ryan back to the table and keep him there. After a few minutes, we were all laughing and I wondered why I’d ever been worried. Things would be fine. Tracey was a big girl—well, not physically anymore—and could take care of herself.
And if not, there was always Rochelle. She’d try and take care of us all. A slip of humidity, orphaned by Fall, thickened the air. Afternoon, now fully clothed, burned away any memory of morning. I swiped my forehead as Rochelle held a piece of wedding cake up to her mouth, surveying the white icing, white cake and red filling. Strawberry or cherry, I couldn’t tell, but that stuff looked seriously nasty.
Tracey’s cake remained uneaten on her plate. “I’m full from that piece I shared with Ryan.”
Yeah, right. I shook my head. My mother would have perished at the sight of this cake, if she weren’t already dead. As it was, Mama had reminded me about how much sage to add to the Thanksgiving stuffing on her deathbed. She didn’t do things fancy, but she did them right.
Jericho arrived with two pieces on his plate. “It looks good to me.” With youthful abandon, the boy bit into a mammoth slice, pausing only to give a thumbs-up and shove more into his mouth.
Rochelle shrugged. “Remember that black fruitcake with the white icing a few years ago?”
Boy, did I. “How could I forget?” Wedding number four. Institutional green dress. Nice jazz. Horrible cake. Nightmare bad. I winced at the thought of it.
Tracey did, too. “Come on, ladies. Stop fronting on the cake. It’s good. Right, Jericho?”
He nodded, licking his fingers.
As if a teenager’s opinion about food could be trusted. I frowned. “That boy would eat the paint off my car.”
Jericho paused, considering the possibility. “Not your car. Maybe Adrian’s…”
Everyone except Ryan and Jericho froze.
Adrian. The taboo was broken. Someone had mentioned his name.
“Hush, Jericho.” Rochelle looked away. Tracey’s eyes avoided mine, too. I’d made it all day without saying it, though his name was ready on my lips. I didn’t dare speak it any more than I dared open the letters and e-mails he’d sent me over the past year. I hoped I was being selfish and silly, denying him because of what he’d denied me, but I couldn’t be sure. All I knew was that Adrian meant trouble. Good-looking, good-smelling trouble, but trouble all the same.
Jericho smiled, oblivious to my pain. “Adrian’s Benz-o. Now, that thing is pretty enough to eat.”
And so is he.
I pressed my eyes shut. “I’ll have some cake after all.” Rochelle’s mouth was already white with icing.
My fork picked between the layers.
Tracey elbowed me. “It’s good. His mother made it.”
His mother? All that money and his mother made the cake? How could Tracey be so bourgeoisie and so cheap at the same time? I was no wedding planner, but you didn’t drop twenty grand on a wedding just to let the mother of the groom whip up the cake in the church basement. I could see the telltale grooves from our fellowship hall baking pans now that I looked closer. “The swirls are pretty—”
“Eat it!” The cry was collective.
I jumped, banging my knees against the table legs. “All right, already.”
Please don’t let this taste as nasty as it looks, I prayed, then shut my eyes and slid the fork into my mouth. Strawberry filling, cherry icing and light-as-air white cake melted on my tongue. “Wow.” Both hands flew to my mouth, a crazy thing I do when something tastes extraordinary. The food swing, as Rochelle calls it.
I moved a little too fast, evidently, but not fast enough for anyone to miss the hum of satin ripping up my sides. My chest tightened. Further inspection revealed two inch-high slits, hardly identifiable if I kept my arms down, but humiliating nonetheless.
“Now that was funny,” Jericho said, choking down the rest of his second piece of cake.
Rochelle crossed her arms, trying to look serious. I sighed. Those quiet ones. They keep their emotions corked and when they blow, it’s a total explosion of stupidity.
“Don’t even start,” I said, smashing my arms against me like sausage casings.
Tracey sputtered on the other side of me, making the sound my car does on winter mornings. I rolled my eyes, knowing that once the bride let that laugh go, it’d be at least ten minutes of uncontrollable giggling. Considering the stress of the day, she might go longer. That was a real concern. Rochelle’s busting a gut was one thing, but Tracey rolling on the ground in her wedding dress was more humiliation than even I could bear. Not that I thought she’d go that far, but there was that time she’d giggled herself into the salsa at the junior prom.
“You people are sad, you know that?” I shook my head.
As if that had been the punch line for a sitcom, Rochelle reached across the table, yanked up one of my arms and then collapsed in her chair, her body contorting like James Brown. Her mouth opened and closed in the this-is-so-funny-no-sound-will-come-out laughter. Not one of her spritzed hairs dared leave its place.
“This is what happens when people don’t get out much. Too easily amused.” I secured my arms at my sides again.
My attempt to diffuse the humor had no effect. Rochelle turned from the table, holding her stomach. One look at Tracey, with both hands
