Twice Upon a Wedding by Jean Stone

Author:Jean Stone
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780553901375
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2005-03-29T05:00:00+00:00

25

It was agonizing. As soon as Elaine stepped inside the back hall she knew that this was one of those forever moments that gets locked up in your heart and hurts too much to let it out.

Mrs. Tuttle was everywhere.

A pair of gardening boots was parked beneath the coatrack. Next to them were an umbrella with pink and yellow flowers and a frayed straw hat that Elaine’s mother never would have worn.

“Coffee?” Mrs. Tuttle asked. “Your father’s Crab Creole won’t be ready for a while.”

Elaine said okay and sat down at the boothlike kitchen table—our “dinette,” her mother used to call it. She waited for the numbness to wear off. This did not feel like the right atmosphere in which to rebuild the family.

Her father sat across from her. Mrs. Tuttle went behind the counter where Elaine’s mother should have been in her shirtwaist and loafers.

“So,” Bob McNulty said, “this is some surprise.”

He could say that again.

“I worried when I first heard your voice. Is something wrong? Are the kids okay?”

Elaine realized that the “surprise” to which her father referred was her phone call to him, not that Mrs. Tuttle was now sleeping in his bed.

“Nothing’s wrong, Dad. The kids are fine.” Her voice was clear and unwavering, as if she were not at all in shock. She tried to take a deep breath. She tried to smile. She tried to act as if this was no big goddamn deal. “Remember Lily, Dad? And Sarah and Jo, my old college roommates?”

He laughed. Time had not changed the wondrous chortle of his laugh, a chortle that was honest and sincere, as if he always got the joke. “You girls were something. And that Lily. How many times is she married now?”

“Three times. But her last husband died.”

“Too bad,” he said.

Mrs. Tuttle put a plate of shortbread biscuits on the table. It was an unfamiliar plate with a gold scalloped rim, not a white plate with green ivy like the ones that belonged here, in her mother’s kitchen.

“We have a shop now, all of the roommates,” she continued. “We’re planning second weddings. It’s a big business these days.” She blinked at the irony. She wondered if her father would surprise her with that next: “Mrs. Tuttle’s my wife now. Isn’t that great?”

Instead he said, “Do you need money?”

It was not the first time he’d asked if Elaine needed money. He’d asked in different ways, but the offer had been there.

When he learned she’d gotten married: You need money, I suppose.

Then when she was divorced: You’ll be needing money now.

She hadn’t accepted any, ever. It just hadn’t seemed right.

“No money,” Elaine said now, picking up a biscuit to be polite. “A little moral support would be great. And maybe a few ideas for receptions. And some old recipes.”

“Recipes? What? You’re going to give brides a recipe collection?”

She bit into the biscuit, expecting it to be tasteless and dry, disheartened that it was good.

Mrs. Tuttle set two mugs of coffee on the table and abruptly said she’d be off to do her errands.

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