Welcome to Last Chance (30 page)

T
wo weddings within three months, and coming as they did in summer when the Last Chance Motel was at its busiest, would have been more than the average wedding planner/mayor/motel owner could have handled, but Rita pulled it off. And no one was surprised.

She ducked into the crying room off the vestibule where Lainie waited with Fayette. “Standing room only, and I've closed the church doors. We're ready to get this show on the road.”

Lainie glanced again in the full-length mirror Rita had placed in the room and let her hands drift over the soft ivory chiffon of her wedding dress. Her image, misty through the veil that brushed her shoulders in the front and trailed behind her, seemed to belong to someone else.

“You look beautiful.” Fayette caught her hand and squeezed it. “And no one ever deserved happiness more.”

Lainie took a deep breath. “Deserve it? I don't know about that, but I'm so happy it scares me. Is it even real?”

“It's real.” Fayette squeezed her hand again and looked over her shoulder with a smile as Rita bustled her out the door.

Alone in the crying room, Lainie heard the piano music swell and the murmur of the wedding guests hush as Rita threw open the doors from the vestibule and Fayette began her slow progression.

“Now!” Rita's loud whisper and frantic wave brought Lainie to the head of the aisle. She paused and looked over the church. She was vaguely aware of the fragrance of late summer flowers and the sea of smiling faces as the guests shuffled to their feet.

Steven, handsome as ever, stood grinning next to Ray as Fayette reached the front of the church and turned to take her place on the other side of Brother Parker. The choir beamed at Lainie from the loft. From the moment Lurlene heard of the impending wedding, she had been planning the music, and it seemed right somehow that the choir would sing her down the aisle.

But it was Ray who caught her gaze and held it. He smiled his slow smile, and as he started up the aisle to meet her, Lurlene nodded to the pianist and the church was filled with the triumphant opening chords of the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

Cathleen Armstrong
lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and their corgi, but her roots remain deep in New Mexico where she grew up and where much of her family still lives. She and Ed raised three children, and when they were grown, she returned to college, earned a BA in English, and began to write.

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