Melanie had no clue what kind of roses they were. She couldn’t care less as long as they lasted through the party.
Her mother turned, her features settling into something Melanie knew well. Disapproval. “Is there something I can lend a hand with? I arrived early in case you needed some assistance.”
Melanie shook her head. “No. I have it all under control. Is Hillary coming tonight?”
She had called her sister earlier in the week, and Hillary had sounded stronger. She’d said that she would come to the party if at all possible. Melanie’s spirits had been lifted just thinking about Hillary getting out of the house and trying to join the land of the living. She stayed in far too much.
Her mother’s expression shuttered. “Your sister doesn’t enjoy social events, and today wasn’t a good day for her. She sends her best wishes, of course.”
Of course.
Melanie’s older sister lived with Anne in a tasteful town house in the middle of the Spring Lake subdivision. Hillary had once owned a successful salon in Baton Rouge, parlaying her skills as a stylist into a lucrative business, but after their father’s death and her divorce a year after, her struggle with both anorexia and bulimia—two diseases Hillary had thought she’d beaten back in college—had come roaring back. Eventually Hillary had moved in with her mother and seemed to have given herself over to the diseases, hiding herself even more, selling the salon her business partner had kept afloat for years. The constant binge and purge had taken its toll on her body, and in the past months, Hillary looked worse than she ever had, dwindling down to a mere eighty-eight pounds, making people wince when they looked into her now-hollow eyes.
Her sister’s refusal to get help, and her mother’s dismissal of the subject, broke Melanie’s heart. She felt tears prick at her eyes, something that happened all too often these days when she thought about her sister.
But she didn’t have that luxury at the moment, nor did she want to examine too closely the feelings she had about her mother and how Anne had contributed to Hillary’s lack of mental well-being. Her mother had spent a lifetime making passive-aggressive comments about Hillary’s adolescent chubbiness, sending her to “healthy living” camps each summer and buying oversize clothing to hide her “little rolls that no one wanted to see.”
The doorbell rang.
“That must be the caterer. Finally,” Melanie said, hurrying to the side door. Standing on the doorstep were several workers dressed in black chef jackets emblazoned with Gloria Jay’s. “Come on in. I thought you had gotten lost. You were supposed to be here forty minutes ago.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” one of the women, sporting a nose ring, no less, said. Anne would probably say something to the woman. “There was a tanker turned over on I-49 that had traffic at a standstill.”
“Oh well, that makes sense. Come in, and I’ll show you where I want everything placed.”
Ten minutes later, the caterers had put the heavy hors d’oeuvres in chafing dishes, sending the delectable smells of shrimp and grits, smoked oysters, and spicy jambalaya to compete with the scent of the “fussy” roses. Two staff members filled silver trays with bite-size smoked Gouda and crawfish toast points and mini-Natchitoches meat pies. The cuisine of Louisiana would be on display for Emma and Andrew’s guests this evening.
Kit emerged from upstairs, looking like a seasoned model for a fancy country-club brochure. He wore an open-throat linen shirt, navy sports coat, natty trousers, and leather driving moccasins. His hair was swept back from his high forehead, and those crinkly blue eyes looked prepared to charm. He dropped a surprise kiss onto her mother’s cheek, earning a light slap.
“Such a rogue. How do you manage him still, daughter?” Anne asked, her laughter like wind chimes, light and delightful. The diminutive Japanese woman adored being noticed by the opposite sex, especially one as nice looking as Kit. Her mother was, after all, a woman who enjoyed attention, negative or positive.
“I don’t. Kit manages himself.” Truer words had never been spoken.
“Andrew and his mother are here,” Emma said, trotting out the front door, a smile blooming on her face.
“Great,” Melanie deadpanned, straightening the napkins for the fourth time and eyeing the spot where the silver cake knife needed to go.
“Behave,” Kit said, dropping the same kiss he’d just given her mother onto her cheek. “Tennyson is Tennyson. She hasn’t changed.”
“Yeah, she has. She’s got money now, and from what I understand, she has a lot of it. She makes sure everyone knows it, too.”
“Mel, you said you’d try,” Kit breathed, his words a sigh. He knew how she felt about Tennyson, but that didn’t mean he felt the same way. It wasn’t his family she’d ruined, and she knew by the tone of his voice when they talked about high school that he still had a small place of affection for his old love. It incensed her, but she never pursued it because she knew she, too, had a place that still longed for what once was. She trampled that feeling any time it came up with the image of Tennyson in that black dress on the night of their wedding. “I’m going to fix myself a scotch. You want a drink?”
“No, I need to keep my wits about me,” she said as her husband walked out.
Her mother appeared at Melanie’s elbow, and they both watched from the dining room window as Emma hugged Tennyson and then kissed Andrew. “She’s like a bitch cat.”
Melanie glanced at her mother. “Tennyson?”
Her mother’s steely gaze said everything she felt. “She looks fluffy and harmless, but her claws sink deep. And she’s not afraid to bite, is she?”
Anne would never forgive Tennyson for what she’d done that night. People in Shreveport still used the debacle as a cautionary tale for brides who were tempted to invite an ex-girlfriend or -boyfriend to their wedding as a token of goodwill. A lot of vodka and a tiny spark of anger couldn’t be dampened by a cheerful piece of wedding cake and a fun flirtation with a cute groomsman. No, that kind of angry wrecking ball of emotion plowed through good intention, destroying any wedded bliss in its path.
“And she’ll be part of Emma’s family now,” Melanie whispered, feeling hopeless.
“But not ours. She’ll never be part of ours, and I refuse to accept her as anything other than the trash she is.” Anne’s voice had grown frosty enough to freeze the windowpane they stood in front of.
“You should steer clear of Tennyson tonight, Mother,” Melanie said, giving her mother a firm look. “I’ll repeat Kit’s advice—this is about Emma and Andrew, not us. Em doesn’t know that Tennyson broke our family, and I want that knowledge to stay in the past where it belongs. The Brevards have to own our own mistakes. Tennyson didn’t cause what happened. She just lit the match. So let’s try. For Emma’s sake. Okay?”
Those were the words Kit had used on her earlier. Let’s try to ignore Tennyson. But she knew that ignoring anyone like Tennyson was akin to tearing a winning lottery ticket in half. Nothing easy about actually doing it.
Her mother looked at her, defiance and perhaps hate shimmering from her eyes. “I will try.”
Melanie started to quote Yoda but realized her mother would have no clue what she spoke of. Star Wars wasn’t something Anne Brevard would deem suitable entertainment. Instead Melanie walked to the buffet and looked for the cake knife, praying it wasn’t tarnished and could be set out as is. She didn’t have time to clean it properly.