Rosie opened her mouth to tell her she looked spectacular even without the accessories. But she was interrupted by her aunt Virginia, who’d arrived two days ago for the wedding. Known as Ginger to everyone, she’d earned her nickname because of her sharp opinions on everything.
“Very pretty,” Ginger said, walking around her smaller, more curvaceous sister. Then she swatted Sonny’s backside with sibling familiarity. “But I’m not sure you need two layers of fabric right there where you’ve always had more than the rest of us. You should have gone for a shorter jacket.”
Sonny put both hands behind her and looked over her shoulder, checking her reflection in the mirror over the mantel. She had to walk some distance away before she could see herself.
“It looks beautiful,” Rosie assured her, then said politely to her aunt, “We Erickson women are proud of our curves. And the heels will give her more height. She’ll look perfect.”
“They’ll also give her more jiggle,” Ginger declared. “You are wearing a shape enhancer, Sonny?”
“A what?”
“A girdle,” Rosie translated, then made a point of looking at her watch. “You don’t need one, Mom. And aren’t you two meeting Camille Malone for dinner?”
The ormolu clock on the mantel chimed six as though in compliance with Rosie’s need to get her mother and aunt out of the house—and out of her hair. She had every detail of the wedding under control except for those two.
“We are!” Ginger exclaimed, shooing her sister toward the stairs and the bedrooms. “Hurry up! Let’s get changed.”
“Relax.” Sonny resisted the attempt to hurry her. “Camille won’t be upset if we’re a few minutes late.”
“I want to try to charm her into writing her autobiography,” Ginger said, hurrying around Sonny and starting up the stairs. “Old movie stars are hot stuff these days,” she said.
“But she’s led a very quiet personal life.”
Ginger nodded greedily. “But I understand there’s a scandal involving her oldest daughter’s father.”
“Jasper O’Hara?” Sonny asked, clearly puzzled.
Ginger continued up. “He wasn’t the father,” she said.
“What? How could you possibly know that? You’ve been here all of two days.”
Ginger shrugged. “It’s a gift. I know where the stories are and who wants to buy them. I met a woman on the train coming in who knew all about her. She was returning from Christmas shopping in New York. Seems Camille told a mutual friend of theirs in confidence and she told me.”
“Some friend.” Sonny chased her up the stairs. “You will not ask her about her…” Her voice faded as a door closed.
Oh, no. Camille’s daughters, Paris Sanford and Prudence Hale, were Rosie’s friends. Rosie knew there were shocking facts about Paris’s father that Camille wouldn’t want to discuss. Rosie trusted her mother to talk her aunt out of promoting the book idea.
Of course, talking Ginger out of anything was a major undertaking. She’s been married at seventeen, divorced at nineteen, married again at twenty-one, divorced five years later—and then married a third time at the age of thirty. She was now divorced again.
The four Chamberlain sisters, of whom Ginger was the eldest, had grown up in Beverly Hills, daughters of a prominent heart surgeon and a gifted cellist. Ginger was now a literary agent in New York City, while the second eldest, Sonny, had given up her plans to study law when she’d married Hal Erickson in her senior year at Princeton. Sukie, or Susan, had been sickly most of her life but thanks to a doting husband, lived comfortably in Palm Springs; Sonny and Ginger planned to visit her together right after the wedding. The youngest sister, Charlotte, had had a brilliant career in music, before dying in a tragic traffic accident when she was only twenty-five.
Rosie still found it difficult to equate the motivated and single-minded mother she knew with the dewy-eyed college senior who’d thrown in her lot to support the brash and ambitious son of a longtime Maple Hill family.
Hal Erickson had built a large, successful construction company in Boston. When his father passed away, he sold his business and took over the helm of his father’s Berkshire Construction in Maple Hill. He’d maintained the company’s reputation for quality work, got involved in bringing business to the community. He’d been serving his second term on the town’s Industrial Growth Committee, and Rosie had been in the middle of her first term, when Jay had the accident. The projects under way at the time were stalled by his death, and Tolliver Textiles had backed out of the deal. The committee had been dormant until its resurrection at the fall festival dinner. She was convinced that if she was staying here, she had to take a hand in strengthening business.
But someone wasn’t happy about the plan, according to a message left on her answering machine several days ago. She hadn’t recognized the voice and caller ID had been blocked, so she’d just erased the vaguely threatening request that she let the textile plant remain in Boston.
It was impossible to please everyone, but she thought once she had Tolliver Textiles firmly interested in moving to Maple Hill, she’d ask Haley Megrath of the Maple Hill Mirror to report on the process of making the project happen from the Environmental Impact Statement on the parcel of land in question, to the construction of the building so that fears were allayed.
Frankly, she was grateful for the challenging project, even though real work wouldn’t begin until the new year.
She didn’t know how long it took other people to recover from loss, but she suspected she wasn’t even halfway there. She kept going because she didn’t know what else to do. And she had the feeling that if she stopped or gave up, her mother and sister might flounder with her.
And then there was her nephew, Chase; all he really had was the three of them. She had to keep going.
Rosie went back to the gift cataloging she’d been doing before her mother had modeled the pink suit. A corner of the large living room had been turned into a receiving area and temporary storage. Francie and Derek Page, her fiancé, had opened gifts as they’d arrived, and left the cards in the item or attached to it as Rosie had advised. Now she was being a helpful big sister and making Francie a list for thank-you notes.
“You’re sure your services don’t include writing the notes?” Francie had said, looking forlornly at the sea of gifts.
Rosie had shaken her head. “Hey, you’re the blushing bride. That’s your job.”
“I’ll pay you.”
“There’s not enough money in the world.” When she’d married Matt six years ago, their treasure trove of gifts had looked a lot like this. And she’d written thank-yous in her spare time from Thanksgiving to Christmas.
Matt. She didn’t want to think about him, though when he arrived, she’d be forced to. Until then she was going to pretend, just as she’d been pretending for the past year, that he’d never come into her life.
“Aunt Rosie!” Chase raced in, arms wide like the wings of an airplane. “Look! I’m a navy Tomcat!”
“Really.”
