Chapter One
Delilah
The seamstress pats my butt again. It’s a very firm, professional pat.
A moment later, she follows it up with a pin prick.
“Sorry,” she says, though it sounds more like thowwy because of the pins clenched between her teeth. “Please hold still.”
That comes out as peesh hole shtiww, but the fact that I can understand her perfectly is a testament to how much time I’ve spent a bridesmaid dress while a well-meaning but stern woman frowns at my backside.
Usually that woman is a seamstress. On occasion it’s been my stepmom or the bride, because a bridesmaid dress that looks pretty and proper on the rest of the bridal party inevitably makes me look like I’m heading out to work the pole.
“She was standing on a chair on top of an end table?” asks my stepmother, Vera, from her seat at the massive dining room table. “With a shotgun?”
“Apparently she’d had it up to here with the squirrels in the attic,” I say, still holding perfectly still.
“She’s lucky she didn’t break her neck. Or a hip. At her age, that’s nearly as bad.”
“Does she have something against ladders?” asks my sister Winona, sitting off to my right on a huge leather couch. She’s carefully putting custom snow globes into small, decorative boxes.
“Her ladder broke last year when she tried to patch the roof during a thunderstorm,” I say. “She hadn’t gotten around to replacing it yet.”
“Well, bless her for being spry enough to fix a roof in her eighties,” Vera says. “I certainly couldn’t manage that.”
I’m not sure Vera’s ever been on a ladder in her life. Vera doesn’t go on ladders. Vera hires people to go on ladders.
Next to her, my sister Ava sighs.
“Well, what should we do with Beauford’s seat?” she asks.
“Just leave him out,” I say, shrugging.
Behind me, the seamstress huffs.
“Sorry,” I tell her.
“Then we’d have an odd number of people at the head table, and it’ll look strange,” Ava says, looking slightly worried. “I mean, another table, maybe, but people will be paying attention to that table.”
“May I see that?” Vera asks Ava, who slides a sheet of paper over.
Vera contemplates it. Intently. Ava takes another sheet of paper on floral letterhead and consults it. Winona keeps putting snow globes into boxes.
I keep my doubts about whether anyone will be examining our table to myself. No one looks at bridesmaids. No one cares how many people are at their table. There’s no way this matters.
On the other hand, my youngest sister didn’t become president of Kappa Gamma Alpha by glossing over details.
“You know, it would be a shame for that meal to go to waste,” Vera finally says, sitting back in her chair, legs crossed, and looking at me. “It’s already paid for, you know, with the wedding two days away.”
“I’ll bring Lainey,” I offer. “She’d have a great time.”
“You can’t bring a girl friend to a wedding,” Vera says, looking back at the seating chart. “Wait, she’s just a girl friend, isn’t she? Not a girlfriend?”
“If she were my girlfriend could she be my date?”
“Norman and Wes are coming,” Ava pipes up, still looking at the list. “You wouldn’t be the only gay couple!”
I wish I were surprised that, of three hundred and sixty-something guests, there’s one gay couple, but I’m not. My family isn’t explicitly regressive, but they do run in some very traditional circles.
Vera ignores my hypothetical question.
“This could be a good opportunity for you,” she says. “You need a date, isn’t there someone you’d like to ask?”
“Not really,” I say, as the seamstress moves around to my front, still frowning. “Can’t I go alone and spend time with my family?”
Vera doesn’t take the family time bait.
“What about the man who owns that bakery next to your shop?” she asks. “Everett?”
“Evan Hill,” I tell her. “He’s married. I think his wife is pregnant. Or maybe they just got a dog.”
“One or the other,” Winona deadpans, loud enough that only I can hear.
“I don’t know, he’s been going on a lot about responsibility lately,” I mutter back. “I kind of glossed over the details.”
“George Thompson,” Vera calls out, running a highlighter over a sheet of paper. “His quarry business is going quite well —”
“No,” I call back, because George Thompson is both insanely boring and currently trying to legalize mountaintop removal mining so he can make more money, which makes him evil.
“William Obach.”
“Married.”
“Jonathan Haynes.”
“Married. With four or five kids, I think.”
“Or dogs,” Winona says, too quietly for Vera to hear.
“Brian Sutton. Jethro Long. Timothy Newhall?”
“Married, no, and married,” I call back.
Vera sighs. She caps the highlighter, then looks over at me, the look on her face mostly thoughtful but slightly annoyed. The seamstress pats my butt softly.
“It’s the small-town south,” I point out to my stepmother. “Everyone my age has been married for seven years, and they’ve already got three kids and a minivan.”
“And you’re sure Beauford can’t just pop back by for a few hours?” she asks.
“Mom,” Ava admonishes. “His grandmother’s in the hospital. In Tennessee.”
Vera sighs.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” she says. “What about Tucker Yates? I heard his divorce from Cathy was finalized at last.”
“Tucker’s divorced because he’s a lunatic who thinks the earth is flat and the president of the United States is a lizard in disguise,” I say.
“And because he cheated on Cathy with an eighteen-year-old,” says a new voice as Olivia, my middle sister, walks through the door. “Have y’all seen — oh, there they are. Why are we talking about that sorry excuse for a man?”
“Delilah’s date canceled last minute and she’s refusing to go with anyone else,” Vera sighs.
“Beau’s grandmother is in the hospital,” I explain.
“Because of squirrels,” Ava adds.
Olivia just raises her eyebrows.
“Aren’t you still doing your nun thing?” she asks me.
I shoot her a good, hard glare.
“What?” she says, blinking her wide blue eyes, oblivious.
“Delilah hates it when you mention the detox in front of Mom,” Winona explains.
“You can’t still be doing that,” Vera says, politely astonished. “It’s been nearly two years.”
“Two years Tuesday, actually,” I say. “Some families would give me a certificate in recognition of my accomplishment.”
“Then this is the perfect time to re-start dating,” she says, ignoring my certificate comment. “You’ve had plenty of time to sow your wild oats —” she waves one genteel hand in the air, “—take your stripper class, do your meditation, all those things you’ve been up to.”