“And my mother too! She controls with tears. She looked at my beautiful wedding gown and cried because she didn’t get to help me pick it out. She cried when I said I wanted to be married outside under a rose arbor. She said it would break her heart if I didn’t get married in some church she went to as a child. I’ve never even seen it! And she cried when she told me she was disappointed that I hadn’t chosen our next-door neighbor’s daughter to be my maid of honor. I couldn’t stand her as a girl, much less as a woman.”
“Tears and tyranny,” Alix said.
“The same difference as far as I’m concerned. Tomorrow I’m facing the war of the bridesmaids. I have to tell three women that they can’t be in my wedding because I don’t like them. Then Glenn’s mother will—”
She broke off because Alix got up and started pacing around the garden. Toward the back was a pergola and Alix stopped to look at it.
“I think these are—Ow! Yes, they’re climbing roses.” She’d pricked her finger on a thorn. “Izzy,” she said firmly, “you’re going to have your wedding here in this garden.”
“I can’t do that,” Izzy said.
“Why not? It’s your wedding.”
“The two mothers would make my life a living hell.”
“So we’ll make sure my mother is here,” Alix added, devilment in her eyes.
Izzy’s eyes widened. “If there’s anyone …”
“Who could stand up to your two mothers, mine can.” Alix smiled.
Izzy looked across the fading light to Alix. “Do you think this could work?”
“Why wouldn’t it? You just have to be firm and tell them what you’re going to do.”
“I would have to leave Glenn and move here to plan this thing.”
“No,” Alix said. “You need to spend time with him. Besides, if you divide, they’ll conquer. Tell Glenn he has to back you up on this or there won’t be a wedding.”
“But I can’t do that!”
“Okay, then split yourself down the middle and figure out how to please both mothers and let Glenn hide out with his cars.”
Izzy couldn’t help laughing. “Sometimes you sound just like your mother.”
“And here I thought you were my friend.”
Izzy closed her eyes for a moment. “I think I’m like my mother because I may start crying right now. Alix, you are the best friend anyone ever had.”
“No better than you,” she said softly. “I couldn’t have survived Eric if you hadn’t been there.”
“Ha! It was the sight of Jared Montgomery’s lower lip that brought you out of the doldrums. Hey! I have an idea. Since you can write so well, how about helping me with my vows?”
“We’ll get Mom to do it. Of course she’ll want a contract, a due date, money on signing, and a copyright, but they’ll be killer vows.”
The two young women looked at each other and went into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
Upstairs, standing by an open window, Caleb Kingsley looked down at them. He was smiling. You could spend two hundred years making plans and you could die again when they fell through, but sometimes you saw and heard things that gave you hope.
He was glad to see the two young women together again. Sisters in one life; friends in this one.
Maybe, just maybe, this time he would get to hold Valentina for real. Forever.
That night Alix called her father, Ken. Before she punched the buttons, as always, she reminded herself that it was better if she didn’t mention her mother. It wasn’t that the two of them hadn’t learned how to get along over the years, but give them any ammo and the questions started—with Alix caught in the middle.
“Hi, baby,” her dad said on answering. “Did you get to Nantucket okay?”
“You’ll never in your life guess who’s staying in the guesthouse.”