Regrets Only (17 page)

It
struck Suzanne as odd that a soft-spoken, sweet girl like Kate would command so
much power over an established professional in her forties like Yvette.
Certainly it was not owing to any outlandish demands on Kate’s part. As they
went over Kate’s expectations together, Suzanne found that Dylan’s younger
sister was meek about her opinions and preferences almost to a fault.

“I
don’t know, Suzanne, what do you think?” Kate was saying for the hundredth time
in the past hour.

“Well,
it’s really up to you, sweetie,” Suzanne said. “Personally, I think with an
outdoor wedding it’s better to go with the nicer, white plastic folding chairs,
rather than the ones with fabric covering. That way, if it rains…”

“Of
course,” Kate said. “That’s so smart. It’s the kind of thing I would never
think of.”

Suzanne
put a hand gently on Kate’s to get her attention. “Sweetie, ease up on
yourself, okay? I wouldn’t have thought of it either, except that I had a
hundred and fifty black velvet chairs get soaked right before an annual meeting
once.”

“Really?”
Kate said.

“Really,”
Suzanne said. “It was a nightmare.”

“What
happened?”

“This
advertising firm wanted a black tie meeting-slash-celebration, but outdoors. We
had a tent over the dance floor and music and stuff, but the president wanted
to give the speech under the stars for some reason—some ‘reach for the stars’ theme
or something, I forget…

“Anyway,
we were all set up, and there was a sudden rainstorm. It only lasted ten
minutes, but that’s all it takes. My assistant Chad and I spent thirty minutes
trying to fix it with hair dryers, until we realized the velvet chair covers
were ruined. We only had two hours until the keynote speech, the chair rental
place was closed for the night, and it was supposed to be this big elegant deal…”

“What
did you do?” Kate asked, her eyes wide as though Suzanne were telling her she’d
been present for the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Suzanne
laughed at the memory. “It sounds crazy, but I had just done a huge event the
weekend before called ‘Couches for Kids’ where people donated their old sofas
to a children’s shelter thrift store. It was sponsored by a big furniture
company, people got a coupon for donating, yadda yadda…”

Suzanne
could feel herself becoming animated as she recounted it. Something about an
impending crisis had always energized her. She was at her best in those types
of situations, and her resourcefulness under pressure set her apart from other
event planners. “Anyway, I called my contact at the shelter and it turned out
there were still a ton of couches on one of their trucks. So Chad ran to a
fabric store and bought every yard of black fabric he could find, while the
guys from the shelter brought all the couches out to the venue and set them up
instead of chairs. We even put some floor lamps around and hooked them up to
extension cords, right in the middle of this field.”

“How
funny!” Kate said.

“Yeah,
and the effect was actually pretty spectacular,” Suzanne said, grinning in
spite of herself. “It actually made the
AJC
. There was a wave of outdoor
couch parties in Atlanta the whole summer after that. The firm’s president was
so happy with the publicity of his event he made a big donation to the
children’s shelter.”

“That’s
awesome!” Kate said. “Sounds like it worked out even better because of the
rain.”

Something
about the sweet twenty-four-year-old’s unadulterated admiration checked
Suzanne’s own enthusiasm. Last week both the children’s shelter and the
advertising firm had fired her, very politely and apologetically.

A
reputation takes years to establish
,
Suzanne’s mother reminded her,
but only one night to ruin forever
. Of
course, Mom had been talking about one night in the back seat of a Buick, not a
public debacle at a hallowed institution of art, but the principle still held.

“That’s
exactly why I recommended her, sis,” said a voice behind Suzanne. “She’s kind
of a creative genius, at least for a blue-blooded city girl.”

She
turned to see Dylan entering the kitchen behind her. Without his guitar she
could see that he was wearing old jeans with paint splatters on them and a
beat-up Ramones t-shirt. “I know she’ll come up with something as unique as you
are.” He walked behind Kate and tousled her hair affectionately on his way to
the refrigerator.

Kate
threw an elbow at him in an unconscious gesture of playfulness. Suzanne
imagined this was the same basic interaction they had been having since they
were kids. Dylan fished a few beer bottles out of the fridge and gestured
toward Suzanne on his way back to the den. “Hey, when you ladies are done in
here, I need to talk to you for a second.”

“Me?”
Suzanne asked.

“Yup.”

She
and Kate exchanged shrugs. “Well, I guess let’s get back to it,” Suzanne said
when he was gone. “Sounds like your brother needs me for some reason.”

“Yeah,
Jeff will be back soon, too,” Kate said. “We’re going to town for dinner.
Trying to get all the time we can before the summer tour starts.”

“So
he travels with Dylan?”

“Yes.
Basically as soon as the wedding is over, they’re all hitting the road. It’s a
short tour this year, though, which is nice. We’re taking a honeymoon in September.”

“Why
not get married then?” Suzanne asked. “I’m sure it’s lovely here in the fall,
with the leaves changing on the mountain.”

Kate
went scarlet. “It’s a long story,” she said, fidgeting with a scrap of lace.

Suzanne
instinctively changed the subject. “It must be hard, having him away so much.”

“Well,
yeah, it is. But I have my parents and my older sisters. Half-sisters. You
know, Dylan and I are full siblings and then there are two older sisters on
each side.”

“Yes,
I’d heard that. I saw two of your sisters at the—” she hesitated, watching
Kate’s response. “At the gala a few weeks ago.”

If
Kate knew about the incident, it didn’t show on her pretty features. “That was
probably Sherrie and Amber. They’re both here now, actually. They’re the single
ones, the ones you usually see…in the limelight.”

The
ones making asses of themselves and getting plastered all over the tabloids
, Suzanne corrected mentally. But
then who was she to talk?

“I
love them and everything,” Kate said. “They’re Mom’s kids and they lived with
us when I was young. But I’m actually closer to my other sisters, Francine and
Carla. They’re both married with kids. I have great nieces and nephews!”

“Dylan
mentioned you really like kids,” Suzanne said conversationally. Kate nodded.

“Do
you get to see them much?”

“Francine
lives in Memphis with her husband, so I see her little boys pretty often. Carla
teaches at the American School in Madrid—her husband is Spanish—so I don’t see
her and her family as much. I’m spending a few weeks with them this summer,
though. I’m really excited.”

Kate’s
face, however, did not reflect that excitement. At least not at this second.
Her pallor was suddenly pale and green, especially in contrast to the deep
blush from just moments ago. “Kate? You okay?”

“Yes,
I’m fine. Would you excuse me, though? Can we talk again later? Or tomorrow?”
Without waiting for an answer, Kate rushed out of the room. Suzanne heard quick
footsteps on the stairs and the rapid slam of a door above.

Had
it not been for Marci, she might not have put it together. Having recent
experience, however, watching morning sickness in action—which did not at all
confine itself to mornings and therefore had a stupid name—Suzanne thought she
knew why Kate did not want to wait until fall to get married. She smiled to
herself and collected the materials back into the binders, making herself a
note to look up all the foods pregnant women weren’t supposed to have, so she
could put them on the block list from the wedding meal.

When
she had everything neatly stacked on the counter, she wandered out to the den
looking for Dylan, and found that almost everyone had vacated the large room.
Yvette alone sat on the abandoned couch, working away on her laptop, with three
phones and several manila file folders lying next to her. She smiled perfunctorily
when Suzanne entered.

“Um,
I think Dylan wanted to see me?” Suzanne said.

“They
went downstairs,” Yvette said, closing her laptop. “I’ll take you down there. I
might as well give you the tour and show you to your room while I’m at it.”

“Great.”

The
house was as spacious and commodious on the inside as Suzanne had imagined from
the outside. The second story was in the shape of a fat “U,” wrapping around
the open den downstairs with a landing railed by solid, polished pine. Six guest
bedrooms were upstairs, each pair taking up one side of the house and sharing
an adjoining full bath between them. Yvette opened the door to an empty room at
one end of the hall, saying, “Dylan’s parents will stay here when they arrive
tomorrow, so I’ll just show you this one so you get the idea.”

Large
for a guest bedroom, especially in a cabin, the picture windows looked out on
two sides toward the wilderness beyond. The furnishings were rustic but pretty,
and the walls boasted pictures of Dylan and his five sisters at various ages.
In one corner was a pet bed, and Suzanne remembered that Dylan’s mother had a
small dog she took with her everywhere. This was obviously the room his parents
always stayed in.

“Do
you spend a lot of time here?” Suzanne asked curiously.

“Well,
sometimes,” Yvette said. “Dylan comes here for a week or two at a time at
different times of the year. It’s a good place to get away and work. Quiet, but
room enough for lots of people. The guys wrote the entire
Fireflies
album here. My room is in the guesthouse with yours. I’m not always with them
when they’re here, but when they need me it’s easier to be on the premises than
at a hotel in town.”

For
the first time, Suzanne wondered what kind of personal life Yvette had. What
did she do when she was off the clock? Was she ever off the clock?

Yvette
cocked her head to the side, listening, and Suzanne thought she discerned what
might
be the sound of vomiting from the bathroom door.
Kate.
Suzanne coughed
loudly to try to cover the sound, and then put her hand on Yvette’s shoulder. “What
about the master?” she asked, searching for a distraction.

“It’s
downstairs,” Yvette said. “Though obviously we can’t go in
there
.”

Obviously.

Still,
Yvette had taken the bait and led Suzanne back downstairs. They covered the
den, an office/library, and what was obviously originally intended as a dining
room but was used to house an assortment of music equipment. “This can all be
out before the wedding,” Yvette said. “Between the two main rooms and the
library, I think you could seat forty-five inside easily. The longest part of
the back deck will accommodate two ten-by-twenty tents, I believe, which would
be another forty. I think Kate is only planning to invite a hundred people, so….
Well, you’re the expert; I’ll let you do your own measuring.”

Suzanne
had to admit being impressed at Yvette’s attention to detail. “That’s great.
Thank you for your thoughts.”

As
they passed the door to the master bedroom, which Yvette indicated by a quick
wave, curiosity about it struck Suzanne. How did he decorate his bedroom? Did he
even do it himself? Was it neat or messy? Did Misty have her suitcase full of
tiny shorts in there, too, or was she in one of the bedrooms upstairs? How did
Dylan’s parents feel about her being here?

You’re
a fine one to judge,
she scolded. Still, these thoughts made her surprisingly uncomfortable, and she
pushed them away with a furrowed brow.

They
were going out the back door onto the deck, which was actually more like the
deck of a cruise ship than a house, much less a cabin. At least twenty feet
wide from the house at the narrowest point, it wrapped halfway around the house
on one side and tapered off at the garage on the other. Several bikini-clad
bodies lay face down on chairs at the sunnier side of the deck, where a radio
played music Suzanne couldn’t distinguish.

The
deck also had a couple of narrow piers—it was the only way Suzanne could
describe them—that went several yards over the mountainside to end in smaller
observation decks above the trees. Both of these satellite decks had benches
around the sides, and one even had a little gazebo overhead. It reminded
Suzanne of the movie
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
, where people walked
in the treetops.

 “You
can see the guesthouse, where you and I will stay, from here.” Yvette led her
to the side of the deck next to the master bedroom and pointed down to a small
cottage a hundred yards or so from the main house, tucked neatly into the woods.

As
they turned to go back inside, Suzanne kept her eyes away from the master bedroom
windows, afraid that either Yvette would think she was nosy or that she would
see something she didn’t want to see. An intrusive image appeared in her mind
of Dylan, tangled in a white sheet and nothing else, snoring peacefully,
sprawled across an old-fashioned bed made of pine logs.