Page 9

A few hours later

Amy

The minute I walk through the side door of my childhood home, all the bravado I’ve been faking since the hospital folds. I'm just a cheap lawn chair in a hurricane.

“Daddy,” I croak.

My father stands in the middle of the kitchen, wearing a t-shirt that says WORLD’S OKAYEST DAD and a pair of cargo shorts that have seen more presidential administrations than I have. His beard’s a little grayer, the Viking red fading with age. His comforting brown eyes crinkle at the corners.

And his arms are open.

I fall into them like a sobbing human cannonball. The antiseptic scent of the hospital is replaced by his aftershave, a pine and spice scent that smells like love. He's a little sweaty and I detect some beer with a blueberry undertone in there. Must be his favorite kind, the one from Maine.

“There she is,” he murmurs, wrapping me up like I’m six again and scared that a thunderstorm was going to electrocute my Barbie Dream House. “There’s my girl. I got you.”

His hand strokes my back and I clutch his shirt like it’s a life raft and I’m a Titanic passenger.

“Where’s your mother?” he asks gently. “And where’s... the other mother?”

“Mom’s coming in her own car,” I mumble into his shirt. “And Fiona refused to leave the hospital. Said she’s sleeping there tonight. She's practically going to spoon the vending machine if they don’t let her in Hamish’s room.”

Dad lets out a low whistle. “Yikes.”

“She asked if the IV cart had a spare pillow and blanket for her.”

“Hah.”

"That's not a joke, Daddy!" The acrid smell of tears builds up in the back of my nose. My parents are a weird mix of conventional and boundary-crossing, middle-class simple and strange, strange kink.

Yeah, kink .

A few years ago, I had to help Dad hide the evidence when some kind of sex-swing position went so wrong, Mom broke her leg.

They've never hidden their high libidos, but Dad's definitely more chill about it.

You can't judge books by covers, though.

Mom might be the one who's more OTT, but Dad chose her, so. ... who's the weird one?

From the outside, our little Cape in Mendon, Massachusetts, looks like all the other houses on the block.

The paint could do with a touch-up. The mulch has seen better days.

The perennials and shrubs that Mom and Dad have planted over the years bloom like clockwork: rhododendrons, azaleas, hostas that take over the sidewalk's edge.

I pull back just enough to look up at him. “I think I just single-handedly ruined my relationship with my future mother-in-law.”

He gives me that dry, skeptical look he always wears when one of the women in his life makes a big black-and-white pronouncement, as if the world is ending.

Because it feels like it is.

“Amy,” he says, guiding me to sit at the kitchen table. “Remember Grandma Celeste?”

I nod. “What does she have to do with anything?"

"I swear there's a good point here. Bear with me."

"Sort of. Not much. She died when I was... what? A sophomore or junior in high school?”

He nods slowly. "What do you remember about her?”

I pause. “I knew things were strained between her and Mom, but that’s about it.”

Dad exhales deeply, pulling out the chair next to mine and taking a seat.

He suddenly looks every inch the quiet man who’s carried the emotional scaffolding of this family for decades.

“Your mother and I didn’t talk much with you girls about what happened, but especially you, as the youngest. We figured the less space Celeste took up in your lives, the better.

But I think it's time to tell you the whole story.”

My stomach tightens. “Tell me what? I mean, Shannon and Carol told me Grandma was full of herself and to be careful. She was fine unless you told her no. As long as you went along with whatever she wanted to do–art galleries, the deCordova outdoor sculpture museum, or the Isabella Stewart Gardner–she loved you.”

He leans forward, arms folded on the table. “Your sisters are smart."

I shrug. "I think I was too young to be bothered by any of it. Grandma was just someone we saw because you guys made us."

"Celeste made Marie’s life miserable. She was a narcissist in the purest sense—everything was about her. Your mom spent most of her life trying to win approval that never came. And when we got engaged... well.”

“I knew you eloped,” I say slowly. Narcissist? Where is Dad taking this?

“Yeah, but not why.”

I listen, rapt, as he leans back in his chair, eyes going distant.

“Celeste offered to pay for this huge wedding. She made it sound like her greatest joy in life was throwing Marie the event she never had. Gushed to every social group she belonged to—book club, garden club, even her social service league. Told them all she was giving her daughter a dream wedding.”

A dawning feeling fills me. My day's worries slough off slightly, softened a bit by Dad's sharp recall of the past. "I remember this more now.

Shannon said it was part of why she was able to partially forgive Mom for what happened at her and Declan's wedding.

Happened with Mom, I mean. How she just couldn't let it all go. "

He lets out a breath through his nose, bitter or maybe wistful.

“Your grandmother paraded Marie all over town. Dress fittings. Caterer tastings. Venue tours. She booked this grand estate on the North Shore—on the water, of course. She promised Marie the world. Made minimum deposits on everything but told everyone she’d paid in full. She put things in Marie’s name.”

“Uh oh,” I breathe, skin tingling now. This part, I've never heard. My stomach drops, because I don't like where this story is headed.

“Celeste was dating a man named Kirby at the time—smarmy guy, older, smelled like mothballs and entitlement. Claimed his family name had connections to Boston’s elite, though I’m convinced he just read The Great Gatsby one too many times.”

I shudder. “What happened?”

He stares hard at the table, one knee starting to bounce with the jitters. “The night before our wedding, we got a message that Celeste had been hospitalized. Something about a ‘cardiac event.’ No one could reach her. Marie was panicked, but also a bit numb. Because, deep down, I think she knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That it was bullshit.”

"Bullshit?” I gasp. “You think Grandma lied about having a heart attack? "

"Oh, that's nothing. We're just getting started." He closes his eyes and continues speaking. "The next morning, we went to the estate to get ready for the wedding. Marie had gone to pick up her wedding dress and was told her mom had already collected it.”

“No.”

“Oh, yes."

"Please tell me she was being nice and doing Mom a favor."

He snorts. " Nice and favor aren't words I'd ever associate with your grandmother. We walked in to the wedding venue, and there was Celeste. Not sick. Not hooked up to anything, or wearing a hospital gown. Fit as a fiddle.”

I brace myself.

“She was standing at the altar. Wearing Marie’s wedding dress.”

I can't have heard that right.

“ What? ”

“Surrounded by her friends, the vendors she’d strung along, and Kirby. Who was in the middle of proposing to her in front of everyone.”

"WHAT?"

"Bent knee and all."

“She hijacked her own daughter's wedding to get engaged? ”

“Not quite. Apparently, he’d already proposed the night before, in the hospital room, but Celeste needed more. That was just the warm-up. They got married. Right then and there. At her daughter's venue, in her daughter's wedding dress.”

I clap my hand over my mouth. "You can't make this stuff up."

“She said it was destiny. That her ‘cardiac event’ revealed what truly mattered, and it was Kirby. Told everyone Marie was too selfish to visit her in the hospital and that she’d given up on having a daughter. Said she was starting over with a man who wouldn’t abandon her.”

My jaw drops. “That’s not even bridezilla behavior. That’s villain origin story behavior. Poor Mom. Poor, poor Mom.” My heart spins in my chest. Mom can be gauche and over-excited and not understand that what she wants isn't what we want, but she's never come close to this .

Dad nods. “Marie was in shock. She couldn’t speak.

Couldn’t breathe. Just... stood there, staring at her mom in that dress.

I lost it. I yelled. Kirby tried to hit me.

My friends threatened to burn the place down.

I carried Marie out of that estate while she sobbed into my shirt.

We got married at City Hall that Monday. ”

I blink hard, willing tears not to fall. “She really wore Mom’s dress?”

“And then stuck us with the bill for everything.”

I suck in a breath. "That's so... Oh, my God."

“Every invoice was in Marie’s name.”

“You and Mom paid for the wedding Celeste stole?”

He nods slowly. “In every way.”

A pain-filled silence falls between us. Finally, I say, “I had no idea it was that bad.”

“We kept it from you kids. But Fiona’s behavior stirred something in you, and I see it. You want to do better. You want boundaries. But you’re scared.”

“Terrified.”

“You don’t have to be. You’re not Marie and Fiona isn’t Celeste. I'm not saying she's a narcissist–I mean, I barely know her, but she’s not... empty like Celeste was. Your grandmother was a hollow woman. She only did something if it benefitted her ."

"Fiona's not like that," I whisper.

"No, she's not. There’s love in that woman. Somewhere underneath the glitter cannons.”

I laugh, choked but grateful.

“Just don’t let her steamroll you. Or turn your wedding into her do-over.”

“I won’t.”

He squeezes my hand.

“You’re stronger than you know, Ames.”

I nod. “And I really needed this talk.”

He stands, pats my shoulder, and heads toward the fridge. “Now, want to join me in my man cave for a while? We're having a party."

“‘We’? You and Chuffy?" I joke. Chuffy is Mom’s fluffy white bichon frisé.

"Chuffy’s in there and I think he’s ready to lend moral support. Just be warned—he sheds when emotionally overwhelmed.”