Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) (14 page)

By four o’clock on Saturday, we had transformed Annalise. Emily, Julie, LuLu, and I gathered pink trumpet vines in the forest after breakfast and spent the morning weaving them through a wire arch in the back yard to make an altar. Ava had promised to come after she helped her parents in their store, which I took to mean after she’d rolled out of bed at noon and blown her parents a kiss as she drove by their place. We finished the arch without her and stood back to admire our work.

“Something’s missing,” Emily said, cocking her head.

LuLu circled the arch. “It looks pretty to me.”

“It is pretty,” Julie said. “Katie, do you have any tulle? And maybe some glitter?”

“I have glitter. I’m not sure about the tulle.”

We went inside and searched my closet and drawers until Julie held up an ivory skirt with a tulle overlay. “Could we use this?”

Emily lifted the bottom of the skirt to display it in all its glory. “How vintage Jessica McClintock of you,” she teased. “Where did you wear this?”

I shot her a sideways look.

Lulu said, “You could cut that off and put it with some combat boots and it would be awesome.”

I smiled. Lulu’s pink hair and nose stud would finish out that look just right. If I didn’t already know how smart and capable Nick thought she was, I would have written her off at first glance as a punk kid.

I handed Julie a pair of scissors. “Be my guest.”

Thirty minutes later, the arch was fairy-tale ready. We made matching centerpieces for the patio tables out of the leftover tulle and decided that Martha Stewart couldn’t have done it any better.

Meanwhile, Nick, Collin, and his father gave the grounds a trim and swabbed the decks out back. When I started getting a wee bit stressed midafternoon, Nick commandeered the men to mop inside the house. My friends foraged for snacks as I stood at the kitchen island and breathed deeply. My pulse slowed down in direct proportion to the concentration of Pine-Sol in the air.

“Your freckles have gotten darker,” Emily said as she poured a bag of microwave popcorn into a bowl, “and your pupils are like saucers. Are you OK?”

“Nothing a little sparkling water can’t fix,” I said as I poured myself one. “I think it’s all just hitting me at once.”

“Isn’t it time for you to beautify?” Emily asked, hooking me by the arm.

“Yes, let’s,” LuLu said, and slipped her arm through Julie’s.

We set up our snacks and beauty camp in the master bedroom. I laid my dress out on the bed and we gathered around it to oooh and aaaah, but before we could do it justice, Nick walked in.

“What’s this?” he asked.

LuLu stood in front of the dress with her arms out wide to block his view. “No, no, no,” she said.

“Out, mister,” Emily ordered. “You won’t see her again until she walks out to marry your ass, so be nice and kiss your fiancée goodbye for the last time.”

Nick swooped me over backwards and kissed me. When he set me back on my feet, I fanned my face. “Be still my heart.”

“See you in a few hours, baby.”

I waggled my fingers in a goodbye gesture and Emily and LuLu said, “Goodbye, Nick.”

I heard Ava’s voice as she approached, singing the Captain & Tennille’s
Wedding Song
like a show tune. It was shift change time at the girl party. LuLu and Julie kissed my cheek and left to shower in their own bathrooms, and Ava, bearing a bulging cloth bag, slipped in the door right afterwards. I was alone with my two best friends.

“I promise not to let Emily touch your hair,” she said in a stage whisper, unzipping her valise and dumping it on the bed.

“And I promise not to let her dress you,” Emily vowed. She looked at the pile of strikingly small outfits and asked Ava, “What are those, anyway?”

Ava grabbed a nail file from my bedside table and flopped down beside her clothes. “After-party options.”

Emily and I exchanged a glance. “After party? It’s called a reception,” she said.

“OK, reception options. What are you going to wear?”

“I was just planning on wearing my bridesmaid dress,” Emily said.

Ava raised her eyes from the serious business of her nails to look at me. “Do I have to?”

Unfortunately, I hadn’t chosen cheetah-print micro minis, and satin was not Ava’s favorite textile. “Only until we finish pictures,” I said. “Now, I’m getting in a bubble bath, and I promise, neither of you are going to touch my hair or my dress.” I shut myself in the bathroom and rotated the valves on my claw-foot tub to full-blast hot.

Neither of my best friends would have chosen my dress, but I loved it. I ordered it from Nordstrom’s: a sequined ivory bodice with a V-neck and spaghetti straps and a wrap-style mid-calf skirt. Much to Ava’s chagrin, I was wearing it with her pearled flip-flops. “They for the beach,” she’d said. And when Nick put the gold band on my finger—or back on my finger, rather, since I’d been wearing it for an engagement ring for the over a month—I would be wearing something worn by my mother and her mother before her. I slipped into the tub just as Emily walked in.

“You need some smell-good,” she said. “Matches?”

“Left-hand drawer.”

She got them out and lit the big jasmine candle on the counter, then she pulled out her phone. “Music.” She pressed the screen and Patsy Cline started to sing “Always.”

“Thank you, Em.”

She put a finger over her lips, flipped off the light switch, and shut the door. I sank down into the water up to my smile. The muffled sounds of Emily and Ava chatting outside the door only added another layer to the perfection.

An hour later, the three of us were standing abreast in the bathroom putting on makeup. Time was racing faster and faster. I heard the first cars starting to arrive. Doors slammed. My heart galloped in my chest. I applied eyeliner, mascara, and lipstick as Ava and Emily continued chattering on either side of me, but I barely heard them. I hardly noticed when LuLu and Julie joined us. I was marrying Nick. I had never been more excited about anything in my life. I was ready. Now, now, now, my heartbeat said.

I looked into the mirror and dropped my lipstick to the floor. There were five faces, but none of them was mine. I blinked and gave my head a shake. Impossible. Julie handed me the lipstick and gave me a funny look.

I looked back into the mirror. This time I saw four women and myself. Annalise had disappeared. A knot welled in my throat. I swallowed, but it stayed firmly lodged.

A knock on the bedroom door. “It’s time, ladies.” Collin. With kisses on my cheek, my friends left the bathroom. I followed them into the bedroom.

As she reached the bedroom door, Julie turned back to me and put her hand on my arm. “I’m really happy you and Nick found each other, Katie. Kurt and I both are.”

A tear threatened my mascara. “Thank you, Julie. I’m very lucky.”

And then only Collin and I remained. My big brother, the one who would stand in Dad’s shoes tonight.

“You’re gorgeous, sis. I’m proud of you. Mom and Dad would be, too.” The tear in my eye was catching. I used the handkerchief I had wrapped around my bouquet of orchids to wipe his away.

“I love you, Collin. Thanks for being here. For everything.”

“I brought you something blue.” He pulled a little piece of paper out of his pocket.

“What is it?”

He handed it to me. It was a tiny printed picture of my father in his dress blue uniform when he was the Dallas chief of police. “I thought you could tuck it in your flowers or something. He’d want to be the one to walk down the aisle with you.”

I didn’t trust myself to speak, just slid the picture under the satin ribbon around my bouquet. I nodded at him, my lips tight. He nodded back. He stuck out his arm, I took it, and its warmth under my hand flooded through me. My family. We were it.

The sound of steel pans playing the wedding march floated up to us from the back yard as we made our way carefully downstairs and out to the patio into the soft yellow August light. It was warm, even though the sun was setting. Down the flower-strewn path between the tables my brother and I walked, around toward the arch at the far end of the pool, where Nick was waiting for me.

My eyes met his. The shine in his blinded me to everything but him. He was simply gorgeous, and I wanted to drop my flowers and run the rest of the way to him. He had rolled up the sleeves of his white linen shirt, exposing the dark skin on his arms, the skin I loved to hold next to my own. Behind him, the arch framed the valley of mangoes and the western shoreline. It was so clear you could almost see to Vieques, Puerto Rico. I pictured my mother standing there. I know she would have approved. Of Nick, of the view, of everything.

Words were spoken. Duke’s. Collin’s. Emily took my orchids and I put my hand through Nick’s arm. I wanted time to slow down, but it wouldn’t. The best I could do was savor it, so I tried to memorize every detail, from the sound of the macaws in the distance to the feel of the breeze lifting my hair and teasing my neck.

LuLu carried Taylor forward with our rings and Nick slipped my mother’s ring onto my finger, for good this time. I put the gold band we’d chosen together in Town on his finger. And then he gathered my face in his hands and kissed me. I went up on my toes and threw my arms around him and buried my face in his chest. I let the tears come, and he rocked me back and forth.

“I want to go back and do that all again,” I whispered to him.

“I could relive the moment when you and Collin walked out the door over and over, myself.”

I leaned back in the circle of his arms and he kissed me again.

The steel pan band began to play and everyone surged in to hug us, one after another: Kurt and Julie, LuLu, Rashidi, Ava and her parents, Ruth, Emily, Crazy and Lotta, my old boss Gino from Dallas I’d had absolutely no idea was coming. Contractors. Musicians. Neighbors. Friends.

Our biggest guest, Jacoby, waited patiently for his turn at the end of what had become a long line. He wrapped me in a bear hug and shook Nick’s hand.

“I got news,” he said.

“Good news only, tonight,” I said.

He actually cracked a smile, which I’d never seen him do before. “How about good news first?”

“Marginally acceptable,” I said. But I reminded myself that nothing would bring me down. Not tonight.

“I post Morris at your gate to keep out bad man dem.”

“That is good,” I said.

“What’s the bad news?” Nick asked.

“Derek check in with his parole officer. She say he had a timecard and pay stub for the whole week. She think we confused here in the islands, get the wrong guy.”

Nick closed his eyes and sighed. I put my head against his shoulder.

“I sorry about that. Least he not here to spoil the day,” Jacoby said.

“True dat,” Nick said, and I laughed at his accent, which was worse than mine.

“Go enjoy some food. We have a great mahimahi.” I glanced behind him and saw Julie standing in the midst of the steel pan band with a mallet in her hand. Nick claimed she had never met an instrument she couldn’t play.

“What you trying to do, kill me? I allergic to fish dem.”

“Shellfish, too?”

“Nah, they no problem.”

“Well, then stick to the whelk and lobster Rashidi brought.”

Jacoby sauntered off to the buffet line. We left the subject of bad man dem and joined our party.

But just after the sun went down, we heard a distant crack and all the lights went out, leaving us in sudden dusk. My pulse surged and I reached for Nick. I knew that sound well after Crazy’s stroke. It was a power transformer blowing out by the gate. Amused voices rose around us, but I was worried. What if someone was out there? What if they’d disabled the transformer on purpose?

I heard the squawk of a radio, then Jacoby’s voice right in front of us in the dark. “Morris report everything fine.”

“Thanks, Jacoby,” I said.

Everything was fine except for the fact that we had fifty people in the growing dark at our wedding reception.

Before I could even run for candles, though, all the lights came back on. Applause filled the air. Wow, WAPA’s fast tonight, I thought. Then I realized that was impossible. It wasn’t WAPA. And magic was the only other way I knew to fix a blown transformer.

“Thank you, Annalise,” I whispered. “What a lovely wedding present.”

The party continued, and it was fabulous. Nick and I slipped away just past midnight as everyone else danced and drank rum drinks on the patio.

“Wait,” Nick said as we neared our room. He stopped me and swept me up into his arms. “I want to carry you across the threshold.”

I felt light and incredibly feminine, and I raised my face to rub noses. “My husband. My gorgeous husband, with his erotic nose.”

“It’s enormous, Katie.”

“But your hair balances it out nicely,” I said. He bumped me into the doorframe on purpose, and I laughed.

“Yeah, me and Lyle Lovett.”

“No comparison, Nick, no comparison.”

He settled me on the bed. Fresh hibiscus petals were scattered on the sheets around me. They reminded me of our first night together at the Reef. There was a chilled bottle of sparkling cider in an ice bucket and pieces of the bride’s and groom’s cakes on the nightstand by a ribbon-wrapped bottle of Nick’s fancy face cream and a pale purple bottle of my favorite perfume, Interlude.

“Ah, flower petals and perfume. Nice touch,” I said.

“And thank you for taking on the responsibility of keeping my complexion soft and creamy.”

I laughed. “You’re welcome.”

“I love you, my wife.”

“I love you, my husband.”

And, no surprise, we soon forgot about the cake, sparkling cider, and presents, and all the people gathered outside in our honor, and Taylor in the next room, and world peace, and starving children in India. We entered that special place we went to together, that wild river that we would ride, never knowing what was next, but only that it would catch us helplessly and willingly in its current. We drowned ourselves in each other until we reached that moment of ecstasy and the river threw us onto the beach, joined and panting and alive.

Very, very much alive.