Coming Home (16 page)

I daresay this will be a wedding everyone will be talking about for a long time to come!

—
Grace

Chapter 9

NOW, just you calm down there, honey.” Hal stood in Vanessa’s foyer watching her run around to gather everything she needed before they left for the Inn. “We’ve got plenty of time. I promise the wedding won’t start without us.”

“I need to get there a little early.” She ran past him on her way upstairs for the third time since he arrived. “I have all these favors to take with me so they can be put out on the table with the place cards, and I have to run back upstairs for my dress and I can’t find my shoes.”

“Take a deep breath, slow down, and put one foot in front of the other.” Hal looked amused, and in spite of herself, the sight of the older man in his tux, a silly smile on his face and the box of prettily wrapped cookie boxes in his arms, made Vanessa smile, too. “I swear, even Beck didn’t seem to be as excited as you this morning.”

“Beck doesn’t have an appointment to get his hair and makeup done in fifteen minutes,” she called down the steps as she ran up them.

“Well, it would be a first if he did.”

“What?” she asked as she flew down the steps, the dress over one arm, shoes in her hand, and a tote over her shoulder.

“I said, Beck didn’t mention having made an appointment to have his hair and makeup done this morning.”

“Oh, you …” She swatted at him with her free hand. “I think I have everything.” Mentally she went through her checklist.

“Does this mean we can leave? This box is getting heavy.”

“Oh, you could have set that down, but yes, I’m ready. Let me just find my keys. You go on out, I’ll be right with you.”

Hal went out through the front while Vanessa searched her bag for her keys with her free hand. She found them in the pocket of her jeans where she’d stashed them while looking for her shoes. When she joined Hal outside, he was in the middle of the yard, looking over the debris that had been her carefully planted tulip bulbs.

“What the heck happened here?” he asked.

“I’m not sure, but I think Cujo might have gotten out last night and gone on a tear.” She locked the door and dropped the keys into her bag. “It was like this when I got back from Lola’s. I picked the ones that had a stem and a flower still attached to it and brought them inside and put them in a vase, so at least they’ve gone to good use. First thing this morning I gathered up the loose leaves and petals that were scattered around and trashed them. It actually looks better than it did.”

“Jason is going to have to do something about that dog.” Hal frowned. “I know he isn’t vicious, but he’s fast, and he could hurt someone, or at the least, give someone one hell of a scare if he bowled them over. You should say something to them.”

“I really don’t want to do that.” She shook her head as she walked to Hal’s car. “For one thing, they’re good neighbors except for their dog occasionally taking a shortcut through my yard. For another, I don’t know for sure that the dog caused the damage. It could have been some kids up to mischief.”

Hal opened the trunk of his car and set the box of favors inside. “That’s vandalism, not simple mischief.”

“I don’t know if little kids would see it that way.” Vanessa carefully placed her dress across the backseat and got into the front passenger side. “Anyway, some of the bulbs hadn’t bloomed yet, so there will still be a little bit of a show over the next few weeks.”

Hal slammed the trunk and got into the driver’s seat. As he backed onto Cherry Street, Vanessa said, “Thanks for picking me up this morning.”

“Well, I thought it would be nice if we got to ride over to the Inn together. It’s a family sort of day.”

“It is.” She returned the smile, and wanted to say something like,
Thank you for letting me be part of your family, Hal
. But the words wouldn’t come, so she simply said, “Anyway, I appreciate the ride.”

“I would have driven you home last night, but I hear Grady beat me to it.”

“We were leaving at the same time, so he gave me a ride.” She tried to shrug it off and make light of it. “I didn’t have time to hang around much after dinner because I still had so much to do here to get ready for the wedding. For some reason, Grady thought I shouldn’t walk home alone in the dark. I think he spent too many years in the FBI. As if anything ever happens in St. Dennis.”

“Well, we do have a pretty safe town here, and your neighborhood is generally a good one. That business a few years ago, though … all those girls being murdered.” He shook his head. Vanessa knew it was still painful for him and Beck to look back on the killer who’d taken several young lives, including that of the first woman police officer on their force. “But Grady probably knows better than most of us that there’s no such thing as a place that is one hundred percent safe, one hundred percent of the time. God knows he’s been closer to the devil than any of the rest of us have, and I’ve been in law enforcement for more than thirty years.”

“Maybe so, but one of the things that I really like about living here is that I can walk to and from work every day. It’s not just the exercise, and it’s not just that I’m saving gasoline. I like the peacefulness, the quiet mornings before everything comes alive, and the hum of things winding down at the end of the day, know what I mean? This town is so slow to wake up and early to bed most days.”

Hal chuckled. “Well, for another few weeks, anyway. Then we get full into the season and things won’t be slow around here again till September. But I do know what you mean. The rhythm around here is more downbeat than up-tempo.”

“That’s exactly what I meant.”

She turned her head to look out the window as Hal made a left onto Charles Street and headed out toward Sinclair’s Point. They passed marshes where the cattails were growing tall and green again and the migrating birds had already stopped to forage for food and rest. A red-winged blackbird sat atop a reed that swayed in the morning breeze, and a hawk rose on a thermal to see what it could see. Vanessa had never been much of a nature girl, but that had changed when she moved to St. Dennis and Hal taught her to notice things she’d overlooked before.

“If you’re going to live on the Bay, you need to know the Bay, and all its inhabitants,” he’d told her, and took it upon himself to teach her what he thought she should know.

Vanessa took no small amount of secret pride in the fact that she could now recognize several birds by their calls alone, and could tell a wood duck from a mallard, a mallard from a blue-winged teal from a northern shoveler. She knew more about crabs—the Chesapeake being the home of the famed blue claws—than she ever suspected there was to know. She learned to tell a sook—an adult female crab—from a jimmy—an adult male—and the best way to catch them as well as the best ways to cook them. All tiny triumphs, but to her, triumphs all the same.

The car slowed as they approached the entrance to the Inn at Sinclair’s Point, marked by a handsome sign adorned with a painted life-size great blue heron, to which someone had tied a very large bunch of pink, navy, and lime-green balloons.

“I guess this is the place,” Hal said as he made the turn.

“I’m so excited.” Vanessa could barely contain herself. “This will be the first wedding I’ve ever been in.”

Hal shot her a look of surprise but said nothing.

“No, neither of mine were anything like this.” She sighed and wished she didn’t feel the need to explain. “Anyway, I’m excited for Mia and for Beck.”

“I am, too.” Hal parked near the entrance to the Inn. “Let’s get you and your gear inside, then I’ll park over in the lot.”

He got out of the car and walked around to the trunk. One of the staff who’d been hired for the special event appeared to give Hal a hand with the box of favors.

“Give those directly to Claudia,” Vanessa called after the young man who was hurrying up the walk with the box. “She’s probably waiting for them.”

“Will do,” he assured her.

Vanessa gathered up her dress, her shoes, her bag, and stood on her toes to plant a kiss on Hal’s cheek.

“Thank you again. It makes it extra special for me to be here with you.” She swallowed what she knew would be only the first of many lumps that would come and go in her throat over the course of the day. “I don’t thank you often enough for all you do for me, not the least of which is to always find ways to remind me that—”

“You don’t have to say it, Ness.” Hal patted her on the back. “Now go on in and help your almost sister-in-law get ready for her big day.”

Vanessa nodded. “Right. The photographer will be here any minute. Maybe I’ll get lucky and she’ll start taking pictures of the guys first.”

She hustled into the Inn and stopped at the desk to get directions to the suite the bridal party was using for hair, makeup, and dressing. She ran up the wide central stairway and down the hall to the last suite on the right. Mia, Annie, and Dorsey were all in various stages of prep. The hairdresser provided by the Inn had started with Mia, whose long hair had been carefully worked into a French braid, and was just finishing up with Annie and getting ready to move on to Dorsey. Mia’s makeup was almost complete, and the chatter and laughter seemed to be calming everyone’s nerves. Before Vanessa arrived, a cart had been wheeled in with plates of fresh fruit and croissants and coffee, and Vanessa helped herself while waiting her turn. She stepped through the French doors onto the balcony and looked down on the lawn where the actual wedding would take place and the reception tent had been set up. An altar had been erected for the ceremony, and it was now completely covered with garlands of magnolia leaves and white hydrangea, baby’s breath, and pink roses. Shepherd’s hooks lined the aisle, and silver cones hung from the hooks.

“The cones are going to look gorgeous after Olivia finishes with them,” Vanessa called back into the room to Mia.

“I noticed the cones earlier,” Annie said. “What’s going in them?”

“Bunches of peonies and hydrangea.” Mia’s eyes sparkled. “And Olivia is going to scatter rose petals up the aisle and there will be large urns of flowers at the ends of the front two rows of chairs. It’s going to be gorgeous.”

“It will be,” Vanessa agreed, and leaned on the railing to watch the staff set up the guests’ chairs in a fan shape in front of the altar.

She continued to watch all the scurrying below and wondered what it would be like to have a day like this. It was painful to admit even to herself, but secretly, she couldn’t help but envy the fairy-tale wedding, with Mia a bride so beautiful she could have stepped right out of the pages of a magazine, and Beck a real life Prince Charming. In her heart, Vanessa most envied that Mia had found someone wonderful who truly loved her, someone who would love her for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, and all the rest of the promises that people made on their wedding day. For Vanessa, none of those promises had been kept. For Mia, Vanessa was certain that Beck would keep every one.

She deserves it all
, Vanessa reflected,
and I truly am so very happy for her. She deserves to have it all: the dress and the fabulous day and the wonderful guy and the happily-ever-after—and yes, even the one-thousand-plus glazed lemon cookies. Mia has done the right thing all her life, has made all the right decisions, and had the good fortune and the good sense to fall in love with a very special guy who loves her deeply
.

Vanessa couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to have such a day, such a life. The envy she felt wasn’t the soul-killing, turn-green-and-spit-fire kind, but more a wistful, I-wonder-what-it-would-have-been-like-if-I’d-been-more-like-her envy. And maybe it was also partly because Mia was the person Vanessa wished she’d grown up to be.

“Ness?” Mia was calling to her. “Ness?”

“Oh. Sorry.” Vanessa planted a huge smile on her face before turning around. “I was just watching the goings-on and must have zoned out.”

“Well, zone back in. It’s your turn.”

Vanessa came back into the room, her smile intact, and placed a kiss on Mia’s cheek as she walked past on her way to the chair where the hairdresser waited.

“What was that for?” Mia asked.

“Just because I’m happy for you,” Vanessa said, and meant it.

“Aw, thanks, Ness. I’d kiss you back, but I just had this mouth painted on.” Mia pointed to her very rosy lips.

“I spent ten minutes on that mouth,” the makeup artist reminded her. “Do not mess with the mouth.”

The chatter started back up again with the arrival of the photographer. Vanessa sat while her hair was being blown out, watching and listening, happy to be there, grateful that she was part of this wonderful day when all was right in the world.

She held on to that feeling while her makeup was being applied and she slid into the light-as-a-feather green silk dress; while she floated down the stairs with the other members of the bridal party; while she listened to the strings begin to play. She felt as if she had a part in a magical play—until she started down the aisle and made the mistake of glancing to her right. There, in the last row of seats, in the chair closest to the aisle, stood a woman who looked so much like her mother they could have been twins. Vanessa did a double take.

The woman winked and waved.

Dear God, it
was
her mother.

Feeling a bit like a deer caught in the headlights, Vanessa somehow managed to make it down the aisle without missing a step.

How had Maggie found out about the wedding? Surely Beck hadn’t invited her. Beck never spoke to her. Hell, he rarely spoke
of
her.

What in the name of all that’s holy was she doing there?

And oh, God, what was Beck going to do when he saw her?

Vanessa took her place at the head of the aisle and maintained a fixed smile, even when she met Beck’s eyes. She detected no hellfire burning there, so he apparently hadn’t gotten the good news yet. She focused on Anne Marie, and then on Mia, who appeared at the foot of the aisle between her handsome brothers.

Mia was a picture-perfect bride, with every detail just so, from the flowers in her hair to the amazing gown. Vanessa stole a glance at Beck, who looked positively gob-smacked, and definitely close to needing oxygen. Then her gaze locked with Grady’s for a moment, and she felt the color rise in her cheeks, as if he could read her mind to know that she’d awakened that morning thinking about him.